Jayne Anne Phillips

Books about women and children are not valued in the same way as a book about war. And why is that? I don't know.

I think we really forget how connected we are to the past.

I tell my students that being a writer is like being a member of a medieval guild and that what we are doing is very subversive and very important.

It is hardly surprising that women concentrate on the way they look instead of what is in their minds since not much has been put in their minds to begin with.

In big science, the role of the individual scientist must be carefully preserved. So is the one of original ideas and of contributions.

You can do the best research and be making the strongest intellectual argument, but if readers don't get past the third paragraph you've wasted your energy and valuable ink.