"[Y]ou cannot teach people how to write--the gift of dramatic expressiveness, of a natural sense of structure, of making language sink down beneath the surface of description, all that is inborn, cannot be taught--but you can teach people how to read, how to develop judgment about a piece of writing: their own as well as that of others."From The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative (2001)

"Penetrating the familiar is by no means a given. On the contrary, it is hard, hard work."From The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative (2001)

"Being a housewife is an illegitimate profession... The choice to serve and be protected and plan towards being a family-maker is a choice that shouldn't be. The heart of radical feminism is to change that.""The Daily Illini," 25 April 1981