“I understood somehow my mother’s frustration. And that it was no good not only for her, but for her children or her husband, that she didn’t have a real use of her ability.”

It is perhaps beside the point to remark that bowling alleys and supermarkets have nursery facilities, while schools and colleges and scientific laboratories and government offices do not.

You can have it all, just not all at the same time.

[Feminist:] One who believes in the liberation of that which has been suppressed as female in a man.

The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own.

I have discovered that there is a crucial difference between society’s image of old people and ‘us’ as we know and feel ourselves to be.

Diversity has got to be a part of modern feminism, and I think that my feminism is stronger because its an inclusive thing. I won’t be backed into a corner that polarizes me against other women. And I wished they wouldn’t be either.

I just decided that I didn’t want to be in the academic world, because it was [really] too easy for me at the top. But also it wasn’t active enough for me.

Protectiveness has often muffled the sound of doors closing against women.

Whatever I wrote was heretical. It offended the editors of the women’s magazines.

Regardless of your age, you will always have adventures, unexpected joys and unexpected sorrows.

He’s a male chauvinistic piglet.

Advice? I don’t offer advice. Not my business. Your life is what you make it.

…women who ‘adjust’ as housewives, who grow up wanting to be ‘just a housewife,’ are in as much danger as the millions who walked to their own death in the concentration camps…they ate suffering a slow death of mind and spirit.

Most of the people in the workforce today will spend some years when they also have children and family responsibilities.

We broke through the feminine mystique and women who were wives, mothers and housewives began to find themselves as people. That didn’t mean they stopped, or had to stop, being mothers, wives or even liking their homes.

Just as darkness is sometimes defined as the absence of light, so age is defined as the absence of youth.

God has given to man no sharper spur to victory than contempt of death.

We evolved the ability to communicate disappointment to teach those around us good manners

I can’t point to any major episodes of sexual discrimination in my early life. But I was so aware of the crime, the shame that there was no use of my mother’s ability and energy.

Cancer can take away all of my physical abilities. It cannot touch my mind, it cannot touch my heart, and it cannot touch my soul.

Now my ability to notice things and respond to things and be here is far more profound. With that comes happiness, with it comes sadness, but it’s a beautiful life.

The first qualification for a historian is to have no ability to invent.

On the onside, first there is God, then Sourav Ganguly.

Every actor has a strength, and sometimes you just respond to things that you see yourself better at. I’m aware of what I can and can’t do.