I am a feminist. I'm trying to show the relationships between men and women, always the structural relations, not individual villains. I'd never make….

It's always difficult to write honestly of one's deepest feelings, particularly without the protective veil of fiction. But the more difficult, the m….

People often say to me now, "Your work changed my life." I'm sure that's an exaggeration, but they say it had a big effect on them and enabled them t….

Sexism goes so deep that at first it's hard to see; you think it's just reality..

One important part of historical recording is to get people of another generation to understand the feelings, the passion that went into social trans….

There is still nothing like equality for women in jobs, in family. There's just an awareness that inequality is not acceptable..

Usually, ordinary histories don't get the emotional feel of a period. That's what a novel can do..

Solitude offers a lot that being coupled or being in a group does not. It helps us learn what we are capable of..

Fiction is ideally suited to re-creating the important emotional aspects of history..

My mirror image always had to be interpreted. And for that I sought my reflection in someone else's eyes..

For many decades my relations with my parents constituted unfinished business. I had dealt with them through sheer avoidance and guilt..

When you witness the end of a life up close day by day, you begin to understand time and mortality in profound ways. You see time's relativity, death….

I don't really think myself that sex work is necessarily more demeaning than other kinds of demeaning work..

Within walking distance of any spot on Earth there's probably more than enough mystery to investigate in a lifetime..

I see old age not as something to hide from or dread (though there is much to oppose in the usual treatment of the old) but rather as something to em….

There is a lot of gender segregation. You still have many poor women who work in women-only jobs. In the family, in most cases, only women have the d….

Everything is connected. There is no such thing as an island, especially in our world, global village, the whole thing. Pollution from way across the….

When farming became a corporate venture, and the distribution of food became corporate, the variety of foods that were considered good diminished gre….

As I experienced life on the island, without electricity, plumbing or telephone, I thought it was important to show that people can live as I did wit….

For two years I watched my parents' lives wind to a close. This made me aware of old age as a one stage, the final one, of a long journey..

When I became a feminist, when the movement started in the late sixties, I started writing because I had something urgent to say. My first novel, Mem….