"The fact that I was a girl never damaged my ambitions to be a pope or an emperor.” —Willla Cather

"We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains.” —Ursula K. Le Guin

"Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to 'jump at de sun.' We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground.” —Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

"Most of history is written by men, and about men. So I wanted to give a voice to these invisible unsung women—the ones who didn’t make it into the pages of the history books—because their lives are just as heroic and dramatic (if not more so) as the lives of the men who “officially” make history.” —Julie Otsuka, on The Buddha in the Attic

"Men often say that women change their minds too much. I say they sometimes don't change them enough. I mean changing their state of mind, their attitudes, their outlook, their expectations, their consciousness - most of all, about themselves and what is possible in their lives." —Julia Alvarez

"Genius is of small use to a woman who does not know how to do her hair." —Edith Wharton

"Life is made up of three kinds of people—those who live it, those afraid to, those in between." —Louise Erdrich

"Over my life as a teacher, women have been too quiet." —Marilynne Robinson