I Am An Affirmative Action Hire.

If You Raise An Intelligent Girl She Will Become A Feminist Because Of The Facts Of Her Own Life. Raising Feminist Boys Is More Difficult. Raising Egalitarian Boys. One Of The Reasons You Have To Raise Them That Way Is Because It's Better For Them.

I Always Have Music On Unless I'm Reading Aloud, Which I Always Do Before I Hand Anything In. It's The Only Way To Know If A Sentence Really Works, Without Clunks Or Cul-de-sac Clauses.

In Books I Have Traveled, Not Only To Other Worlds, But Into My Own.

It Is So Easy To Waste Our Lives: Our Days, Our Hours, Our Minutes ... It Is So Easy To Exist Instead Of Live.

[after My Mother Died, I Had A Feeling That Was] Not Unlike The Homesickness That Always Filled Me For The First Few Days When I Went To Stay At My Grandparents'' House, And Even, I Was Stunned To Discover, During The First Few Months Of My Freshman Year At College. It Was Not Really The Home My Mother Had Made That I Yearned For. But I Was Sick In My Soul For That Greater Meaning Of Home That We Understand Most Purely When We Are Children, When It Is A Metaphor For All Possible Feelings Of Security, Of Safety, Of What Is Predictable, Gentle, And Good In Life.