Paradoxically, the most constructive thing women can do is to write, for in the act of writing we deny our muteness and begin to eliminate some of the difficulties that have been put upon us.

what has been termed 'correct' English is nothing other than the blatant legitimation of the white middle-class code.

Language helps form the limits of our reality.

It is partly the absence of recorded history which sends women now to the lives of women past for the detailed documentation of their daily lives.

Feminism has fought no wars ... killed no opponents ... set up no concentration camps ... starved no enemies ... practiced no cruelty. Its battles have been for education, for the vote, for better working conditions, for safety in the streets ... for reforms in the law.

This monopoly over language is one of the means by which males have ensured their own primacy, and consequently have ensured the invisibility or 'other' nature of females.

For centuries women have been saying many of the things we are saying today and which we have often thought of as new.

men have their cake and get to eat it too, for while they decree themselves as representative of humanity, women who argue that men are not, are simply showing how little they know! And when men's standards are defined as human standards, then women who assert that women are different, demonstrate how 'inhuman' they are. It is a real 'Catch 22.

... for centuries there has been a long and honorable tradition of women who have resisted and protested against men and their power.

There is a real split today between those who push the button and those who do the dying.

When women are supposed to be quiet, a talkative woman is a woman who talks at all.