Thinking clearly is, I believe, the road to freedom. It was in the spirit of that feminist essential that I have tried to write. - Vivian Gornick

The feminist perspective has grown immeasurably throughout American life because feminist consciousness has thrived and become ever more sophisticated whereas feminist dogma has shriveled and become ever more parochial.

Vast internal changes must occur in women in which old responses, old habits, old emotional convictions are examined under a new light: the light of consciousness.

It came from a piece in which I said that a time will come when men and women will approach each other at eye level – an idea, and a phrase, to which I was devoted.