I want to dramatise it not moralise over it. I didn't want to lecture or keep pointing things out to the reader, which is what a polemic does. - Vivian Gornick

All my life I've made do with less, because 'stuff' makes me anxious.

If you don't leave home you suffocate, if you go too far you lose oxygen.

My late blooming was very much attached to my being a girl. It's a major thing, being a girl. But after that, you also have to figure in the personal neuroses of each human being. I was smart. My mother saw it, and decided I should get an education – but I had to remember that love was the most important thing in a woman's life. College was only to protect me against the possibility that my husband would die or leave me stranded. I was so hesitant to believe in myself.