“I never set out to write a book to change women’s lives, to change history. It’s like, ‘Who, me?’ Yes, me. I did it. And I’m not that different from other women. Maybe my power and glory was that I could speak my truth as a woman and it was the truth of every woman.”

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.

A girl should not expect special privileges because of her sex, but neither should she “adjust” to prejudice and discrimination.

American women were frustrated in just the role of housewife – but they also managed to enlarge it. And they weren’t just housewives, they were community leaders.

You have to say no to the old ways before you can begin to find the new yes you need.

No woman gets an orgasm from shining the kitchen floor.

Books: our unfailing companions.

For books are more than books, they are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives.

A room without books is like a body without a soul.

Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.

My heart woke me crying last night how can I help I begged my heart said-write the book.

The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.

There was something very comfortable in having plenty of stationery.

There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.