Nancy Mairs

“In the grammar of the phallus -- the I, I, I -- [woman] can't utter female experience.”

“Out of the new arrivals in our lives--the odd word stumbled upon in a difficult text, the handsome black stranger who bursts in one night through the cat door, the telephone call out of a friend's silence of years, the sudden greeting from the girl-child---we constantly make of ourselves our selves.”