 All creatures are flawed, but out of the flaw may come the universe. |
| I think there is a rage against women. I've come to see that now although at the time I did not notice it. I was preoccupied with my teaching and my writing. |
| I never fantasized or invented a thing, not one thing. I knew every single thing I ever wrote about. |
| I think most people don't like others who, without a voice of their own, emulate the other. I certainly don't want anybody just to pick up my thoughts and hand them back to me. |
| I would teach from nine to four, sleep an hour, and write from six until midnight, night after night. |
| A good writer cannot avoid having social consciousness. I don't mean this about small pieces of writing, but about a big book. If it's a big book, there has to be more than one undertow. |
| Some of the poetic writers who insert passages of realism in their texts have no underlying philosophy to uphold them, and revert to realism. |
| I've been willing to go for years without publishing. That's been my career. |
| I'm quite sure that most writers would sustain real poetry if they could, but it takes devotion and talent. |
| The first money I ever had was when I received an award from the American Association of University Women. |
| Dreiser... I love... and almost wouldn't speak to anyone who ever attacked him. |
| If you know anything about James Whitcomb Riley, you know that Little Orphan Annie is one of the most fantastic characters who ever lived in America before Charlie Chaplin. |
| I would say my theme has always been paradise lost, always the lost cause, the lost leader, the lost utopia. |
| All my writing is about the recognition that there is no single reality. But the beauty of it is that you nevertheless go on, walking towards utopia, which may not exist, on a bridge which might end before you reach the other side. |
| When the dream came into being, I always pursued it. |
| If there is no certain reality, the idea of following a leader must be scrutinized. |
| I don't believe there can be a poetic novel without political consciousness. I have a strong political conscience. |
| A lawyer I once knew told me of a strange case, a suffragette who had never married. After her death, he opened her trunk and discovered 50 wedding gowns. |
| If you understand hallucination and illusion, you don't blindly follow any leader. You must know if the person is sane or insane, over the abyss. |
| There were also some cruel reviews by women, but the tone of the male reviewers, sometimes hysterical, was different. I have suffered, but I don't want to name names-but there have been men who have seemed to want to destroy me or my writing, men I don't even know. |
