Much female conversation is, in fact, about survival - but in code.

The illusion of companionship sits waiting in the television set. We keep our televisions on more than we watch them - an average of more than seven hours a day. For background. For company.

Sometimes I feel like a sisterless child.

I say you hurt me. You say I scorned you. We say we care. It begins. The conversation begins.

for many people, loneliness was an experience of time. 'Not knowing what to do with yourself' was the way it was usually put.

In becoming archaeologists of the world of our mothers, we are trying to retrieve the female past and to invent a future.

Humor tells you where the trouble is.

Everytime I say sure when I mean no, everytime I smile brightly when I'm exploding with rage, every time I imagine my man's achievement is my own, I know the cheerleader never really died. I feel her shaking her ass inside me and I hear her breathless, girlish voice mutter T-E-A-M, Yea, Team.

What is commonly called literary history is actually a record of choices.