Loretta folded her arms. She felt like a heroine in a movie, confronted by a jealous husband in a kitchen while outside the camera is aching to draw … - Joyce Carol Oates

"My dis-interest in what people speak of as "women's problems," "women's literature." Have women a special sensibility? No. There are individuals uniquely talented & uniquely equipped to interpret the complex symbolism of the world but they are certainly not determined by gender. The very idea is astonishing. [...] Energy, talent, vision, insight, compassion, the ability to stay with a single work for long periods of time, the ability to be faithful (to both one's writing and one's beloved) — these have nothing to do with gender. [...] The sensibility of a Virginia Woolf, for instance. It's her own, it's uniquely hers. Not because she is a "female" but because she is, or was, Virginia Woolf. Not more sensitive than Henry James or Proust or James Joyce, consequently not more "feminine" in the narrow & misleading sense people use that term today....But then I suppose critics must have something to write about. [...]"

"At least," Mother said, "that's the story Aunt Esther tells."
"What do you mean?" I asked. "Isn't it true?"
"Stories are never 'true'," Mother said. "But they may, almost by accident, contain 'truth'. Sometimes."

Only in love is there trust - even the possibility of trust.