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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Humor tells you where the trouble is.

Sometimes I feel like a sisterless child.

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