It takes as much discipline to be a mother and a wife as it does to do anything else.

To me, a feminist belongs in the same category as a humanist or an advocate for human rights. I don't see why someone who's a feminist should be thought of differently.

It takes as much discipline to be a mother and a wife as it does to do anything else.

I wouldn't characterize my work, however, as directly political.

You have to defend your honor. And your family.

Some girls are taught to be sexy.

In the end, my pursuit of the elusive New York State driver's license became about much more than a divorced woman's learning to drive for the first time.

I had some fears as a kid, but I was also relatively fearless. Maybe that's a result of living half the time in reality and the other half in fantasy.

I loved the atmosphere of the dance studios - the wooden floors, the big mirrors, everyone dressed in pink or black tights, the musicians accompanying us - and the feeling of ritual the classes had.

Sometimes I listen to songs by very smart writers who assume that the world is a civil place with certain formalities that people follow, but I don't see things that way. My own experience tells me that life is not like that.

Don't make a threat and then not do it.

How weird it was to drive streets I knew so well. What a different perspective.

When I was pregnant, I felt filled with life, and I felt really happy. I ate well, and I slept well. I felt much more useful than I'd ever felt before.

My intellect has always been more responsible than my emotions for how I respond to the world.

So you eat, you sleep, and then this wonderful child comes out, but you don't feel like you have any control over that process, over her, over her character and who she is.

There are no rules in fights with girls. Just hurting.

I think people are sexy when they have a sense of humor, when they are smart, when they have some sense of style, when they are kind, when they express their own opinions, when they are creative, when they have character.

I don't think gender is aesthetically defining for me.

Of course, sometimes when you write personally, you are also writing about society, obliquely reflecting topical issues, but not in a way that people would expect you to or in the way that someone trying to make a point would.

I was always inventing characters and making up stories.

If you have to fight a crowd of boys, it's best to go for the biggest one. That way you won't have to fight them all. The others will see that you mean business and you will win their respect.

Girls are crazy and mean. They don't fight fair.

I still consider myself a feminist.

My mother wanted me to understand that as a woman I could do pretty much whatever I wanted to, that I didn't have to use sex or sexuality to define myself.

Writing in other voices is almost Japanese in the sense that there's a certain formality there which allows me to sidestep the embarrassment of directly expressing to complete strangers the most intimate details of my life.

A lot of my writing is not terribly civilized.

Writing is always personal in some way but not always in a direct way.

Each day, and the living of it, has to be a conscious creation in which discipline and order are relieved with some play and pure foolishness.

The police officers, so far as discipline, organization, pay, and orders were concerned, came exclusively under the German Reich police system and were in no way connected with the administration of the Government General.

I think of discipline as the continual everyday process of helping a child learn self-discipline.

It takes as much discipline to be a mother and a wife as it does to do anything else.

I spent several years acquiring the obsessive, day-to-day discipline that's needed if you want to write professionally, then several more, highly valuable years studying fiction writing at the University of Iowa.

I'm not good enough, technically, to be a classic musician. I lack discipline.

Simulated disorder postulates perfect discipline; simulated fear postulates courage; simulated weakness postulates strength.

I do it as a therapy. I do it as something to keep me alive. We all need a little discipline. Exercise is my discipline.

My own early experiences in war led me to suspect the value of discipline, even in that sphere where it is so often regarded as the first essential for success.

Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline.

Perfect retention. I don't think I could do that-I've never disciplined myself to do it.I suppose a lot of it is a question of discipline. Which improvisation is not.

You have got to have discipline and focus - on the customer and how you run the business.

My block was due to two overlapping factors: laziness and lack of discipline.

The student develops an analytical as well as finely blended character. He is able to choose from a wide variety of job fields from which to embrace a career, without having to be a specialist in one particular discipline.

A mode of conduct, a standard of courage, discipline, fortitude and integrity can do a great deal to make a woman beautiful.

I was taking piano lessons with a very good piano instructor in Toronto, and I'm afraid due to my schedule and discipline, it kind of fell apart. One thing lead to another and I was unable to practice as much as I wanted to.

People like me have to have the discipline only to work for clients, corporations, political people, products, services, networks that we believe in and we want to see succeed.

I'm challenged by people like Russell Crowe and Sean Penn who come in with such incredible discipline and power.

The discipline of daily devotion to God undergirds decisions.

In the last analysis, our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves.

We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret or disappointment.

It is one thing to praise discipline, and another to submit to it.