Naturally, my stories are about women – I’m a woman. I don’t know what the term is for men who write mostly about men. I’m not always sure what is meant by ‚feminist.‘ In the beginning, I used to say, ‚Well, of course I’m a feminist.‘ But if it means that I follow a kind of feminist theory, or know anything about it, then I’m not.

If I waited for perfection… I would never write a word.

I like the way the stories of my relationships sound to music more than the way they look in print, in gossip columns or in me talking about them in interviews. I think it’s a better way of telling the stories.

Once I’ve written something it does tend to run away from me. I don’t seem to have any part of it – it’s no longer my piece of writing.

No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

The entering class I joined in 1956 included just nine women, up from five in the then second-year class, and only one African American. All professors, in those now-ancient days, were of the same race and sex.

That is how you get to be a writer, incidentally: you feel somehow marginal, somehow slightly off-balance all the time.

I’ve been writing my entire life, and I’ll always write.

It is generally recognised that women are better than men at languages, personal relations and multi-tasking, but less good at map-reading and spatial awareness. It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that women might be less good at mathematics and physics.

If you insist upon fighting to protect me, or ‚our‘ country, let it be understood soberly and rationally between us that you are fighting to gratify a sex instinct which I cannot share; to procure benefits where I have not shared and probably will not share.

You do get certain publications in the States where, if things don’t go according to plan, they flip the story and it becomes very negative.

I am an example of what is possible when girls from the very beginning of their lives are loved and nurtured by people around them. I was surrounded by extraordinary women in my life who taught me about quiet strength and dignity.

I have suffered most of the things I write about – or my friends have.

I don’t think the relationship between novels and realities are one to one. Of course novels play different roles. It’s essentially just a long narrative form. What you use that long narrative form for can be very different.

Some of the stories I admire seem to zero in on one particular time and place. There isn’t a rule about this. But there’s a tidy sense about many stories I read. In my own work, I tend to cover a lot of time and to jump back and forward in time, and sometimes the way I do this is not very straightforward.

Encouragement to all women is – let us try to offer help before we have to offer therapy. That is to say, let’s see if we can’t prevent being ill by trying to offer a love of prevention before illness.

There are only two ways of telling the complete truth – anonymously and posthumously.

I said on the equality side of it, that it is essential to a woman’s equality with man that she be the decision-maker, that her choice be controlling.

Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn’t matter. I’m not sure a bad person can write a good book, If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for.

When I write about a 15-year old, I jump, I return to the days when I was that age. It’s like a time machine. I can remember everything. I can feel the wind. I can smell the air. Very actually. Very vividly.

I wouldn’t say I’m a feminist, but I don’t like girls pretending to be stupid because it’s easier.

Journalism keeps you planted in the earth.

My mother made me truly appreciate women.

I have owed you this letter for a very long time-but my fingers have avoided the pencil as though it were an old and poisoned tool.

I remember being in Japan when Destiny’s Child put out ‚Independent Women,‘ and women there were saying how proud they were to have their own jobs, their own independent thinking, their own goals. It made me feel so good, and I realized that one of my responsibilities was to inspire women in a deeper way.

There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.

Writing is fun – at least mostly. I write for four hours every day. After that I go running. As a rule, 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). That’s easy to manage.

I just do the best I can and write something interesting, to tell stories in an interesting way and move forward from there.

As far as I’m concerned, I’m a writer who’s writing books, and therefore, I don’t want to die. You’d miss the end of the book wouldn’t you? You can’t die with an unfinished book.

In my father’s generation, the product was 80 percent of what you were putting into the world, and your personal life was 20 percent. It now seems that 80 percent of the product I put out is silly, made-up stories and what I’m wearing.

It may be that the most striking thing about members of my literary generation in retrospect will be that we were allowed to say absolutely anything without fear of punishment.

My enthusiasm seems to cause my world to endlessly offer me cooperative, co-creating experiences. I’m willing and I’m eager, and not just about my writing – I feel the same way about staying in shape, enjoying my family, giving a lecture, or whatever it may be.

In 1969, I gave up women and alcohol – it was the worst 20 minutes of my life.

I was the first woman to burn my bra – it took the fire department four days to put it out.

I don’t go off and sit down and try to write material, because then it’s contrived and forced. I just live my life, and I see things in a word or a situation or a concept, and it will create a joke for me.

Some of our earliest writing, in cuneiform, was about who owes what.

Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: ‚I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.‘

I never have an intended audience. I just write, you know.

Writing is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience is better.

It’s so tedious writing cookbooks or writing the recipes because I’ve never been much of a measurer. But to write a book, you have to measure everything.

I write all my sermons.

I love that I can tell the truth and have people laugh at it.

The question isn’t, ‚What do we want to know about people?‘, It’s, ‚What do people want to tell about themselves?‘

I wrote an article on a new Porsche for ‚Automobile Magazine.‘ I knew the editor, and she asked me to write this article. So I’m more proud of that than anything.

Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.

If I wish to compose or write or pray or preach well, I must be angry. Then all the blood in my veins is stirred, and my understanding is sharpened.

Maybe stories are just data with a soul.

Doing graphic novels is cool! It’s fun! You get to write something, and then see it visually page by page, panel by panel, working with the artist, you get to see it fleshed out.

Beautiful sentences pop into my head. Beautiful sentences that aren’t always absolutely accurate. Then, I have to choose between the beautiful sentence and being absolutely accurate. It can be a difficult choice.

It usually helps me write by reading – somehow the reading gear in your head turns the writing gear.

Write injuries in dust, benefits in marble.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

It’s not easy to define poetry.

I think feminists are unaware of the tremendous extent of the role of women in history.

With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

I never write about the road. I never write about hotels or anything like that.

It doesn’t bother me when people try to deconstruct my songs – because at least they’re looking at the lyrics, and paying attention to the way the story is told.

There are so many men and women who hold no distinctive positions but whose contribution towards the development of society has been enormous.

I’m interested in women’s health because I’m a woman. I’d be a darn fool not to be on my own side.

And as a writer, one of the things that I’ve always been interested in doing is actually invading your comfort space. Because that’s what we’re supposed to do. Get under your skin, and make you react.