I think I would have died if there hadn't been the women's movement.

I tell my students you have an absolute right to write about people you know and love. You do. But the kicker is you have a responsibility to make the characters large enough that you will not have sinned against them.

Fiction is a piece of truth that turns lies to meaning.

Two or three things I know for sure, and one is that I'd rather go naked than wear the coat the world has made for me.

Class, race, sexuality, gender and all other categories by which we categorize and dismiss each other need to be excavated from the inside.

One of the strengths I derive from my class background is that I am accustomed to contempt.

Change, when it comes, cracks everything open.

When I was growing up, I always read horror books, while my sister read romance novels.

I think I would have died if there hadn't been the women's movement.

Every kid I meet who's a reader has got something like that, their fantasy world. And science fiction is the best, especially for girls because it's the one place where you can do the forbidden.

Gravy is the simplest, tastiest, most memory-laden dish I know how to make: a little flour, salt and pepper, crispy bits of whatever meat anchored the meal, a couple of cups of water or milk and slow stirring to break up lumps.

I have a terrible memory.

I think I would have died if there hadn't been the women's movement. It gave me a vision that I could do something different, and it gave me an understanding that I wasn't a monster, or sport, or a betrayer of my family.

I think it's wonderful that people in pickup trucks are buying two flats of dog food and a copy of 'Bastard.' I want my view of the world to be right up there next to gallon boxes of Tide.

I was born in 1949, and by the time I was 10, I figured out that my hope chest was not aimed in the same direction everybody else's was. And that life was going to be very, very complicated. And that I could either be provocative and declamatory, or shy, retiring and scared.

I'll tell you the secret. When you begin with a character, you want to begin by creating a villain.

I'm still very blunt: If you want to be a writer, get a day job. The fact that I have actually been able to make a living at it is astonishing.

If you write a book that's as powerful and successful as 'Bastard,' there's a strong desire to prove there's something else.

It's fun to tease people about where fiction and life intersect.

It's important to set challenges that you're not sure you're equal to.

My assumption when I began writing was that you were never going to make any money. And you were never going to reach everyone. Therefore you had to do as much as you could in the service of something you genuinely believed in. And if you do that and people get upset, well, there you go.

My sisters, we didn't like each other as kids. We were scared of each other, I think, but we've grown to love each other. It was fun to write about these sisters who were supposed to hate each other but really don't.

My son, Wolf, was born when I was past 40 and the author of a best-selling novel. That means he has grown up a middle-class child - one who sometimes asks me for stories of my childhood but knows nothing of what it means to grow up poor and afraid. I have worked to make sure of that.

The hardest thing to teach young writers is that it's wonderful to tell your truth. And that's what you should do. But it damn well better be beautiful.

Watch out, or I'm liable to put you in a story.

When I was growing up, I always read horror books, while my sister read romance novels. My sister became unmarried and pregnant during high school, and she kept saying, 'This wasn't supposed to happen! Why is this happening to me?' Someone should have given her another book to read.

Writing is the only way I know to demand justice from an uncaring universe.

Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies.

If it weren't for women, men would still be wearing last week's socks.

I'm getting a wider circle of fans now. More women, more middle class people.

They didn't even like Margaret Thatcher but at least there was Margaret Thatcher. There have been women, you know, Sonia Gandhi for heaven's sakes in India.

Athletes as role models and heroes is a hoax, a sick hoax. The men and women who are fighting in Iraq, they are the true heroes.

On the road to equality there is no better place for blacks to detour around American values than in forgoing its example in the treatment of its women and the organization of its family.

For a man to strike any women is most brutal, and I, as well as everyone else, think this far worse than any attempt to shoot, which, wicked as it is, is at least more comprehensible and more courageous.

Women don't like advice. They don't want you to fix their problems, they just want you to listen.

Oh yeah, I'm a huge romance fan. And some women like action.

When women go wrong, men go right after them.

Clearly no one knows what leadership has gone undiscovered in women of all races, and in black and other minority men.

I figured out it was a social thing, what women were allowed to do. At a very young age, I decided I was not going to follow women's rules.

The greatest public health threat for many American women is the men they live with.

The world over, give a guy money and it goes to drinking, gambling, and women. When you give a woman money, it goes to feeding, clothing, helping people.

I'm looking forward to providing the men of Seattle with an evening where they can kick back, light up a cigar and enjoy a night to themselves. Women, we can't technically keep you out, but please stay at home.

Feminism is hated because women are hated. Anti-feminism is a direct expression of misogyny; it is the political defense of women hating.

Films have never shown the kind of relationship that can exist between two women.

They know they're going to look beautiful, and I don't think women should look like costumes. They shouldn't look like fashion victims.

I find that a lot of women respond to my work in that it doesn't make them feel bad about themselves.

I married beneath me, all women do.

We in this Congress have a choice. The American people have a right to exercise a choice on this issue, as to whether our men and women will continue to fight and die in a war based on deception and fantasy, or to start bringing the troops home.

I think the key is for women not to set any limits.