You have to defend your honor. And your family.
How weird it was to drive streets I knew so well. What a different perspective.
I loved the atmosphere of the dance studios - the wooden floors, the big mirrors, everyone dressed in pink or black tights, the musicians accompanying us - and the feeling of ritual the classes had.
To me, a feminist belongs in the same category as a humanist or an advocate for human rights. I don't see why someone who's a feminist should be thought of differently.
I think people are sexy when they have a sense of humor, when they are smart, when they have some sense of style, when they are kind, when they express their own opinions, when they are creative, when they have character.
Of course, sometimes when you write personally, you are also writing about society, obliquely reflecting topical issues, but not in a way that people would expect you to or in the way that someone trying to make a point would.
My intellect has always been more responsible than my emotions for how I respond to the world.
I don't think gender is aesthetically defining for me.
Sometimes I listen to songs by very smart writers who assume that the world is a civil place with certain formalities that people follow, but I don't see things that way. My own experience tells me that life is not like that.
I was always inventing characters and making up stories.
It takes as much discipline to be a mother and a wife as it does to do anything else.
So you eat, you sleep, and then this wonderful child comes out, but you don't feel like you have any control over that process, over her, over her character and who she is.