Tillie Olsen and I didn’t know it, but we were part of a movement. - Grace Paley

(Are there any men you think write particularly well about women?) I liked Norman Rush’s last book, Mating. The main character is a very smart woman, very intellectual, very interesting, and very unlike many of the women many women write about.

I begin every class, for instance, with the reading of poems, of something somebody thinks is beautiful. Like sort of a ritual, like saying grace, or thank you God, or something. Somebody comes in and picks up a poem and reads a poem by George Herbert or reads a poem by almost anybody. Somebody read two pages of Faulkner yesterday. I want them to read something they love. So at least two poems are read at the beginning of class-or fiction. (1986)

Someone like Mary Daly doesn't even know how people live-but other women, I think they come from suburban lives or something like that, and no family. That's a certain kind of life but it's not general female life. (1981)