She Would Not Exchange Her

And When Is There Time To Remember, To Sift, To Weigh, To Estimate, To Total?

More Than In Any Other Human Relationship, Overwhelmingly More, Motherhood Means Being Instantly Interruptible, Responsive, And Responsible

She Would Not Exchange Her Solitude For Anything. Never Again To Be Forced To Move To The Rhythms Of Others.

The Habits Of A Lifetime When Everything Else Had To Come Before Writing Are Not Easily Broken, Even When Circumstances Now Often Make It Possible For Writing To Be First; Habits Of Years - Responses To Others, Distractibility, Responsibility For Daily Matters - Stay With You, Mark You, Become You. The Cost Of Discontinuity (that Pattern Still Imposed On Women) Is Such A Weight Of Things Unsaid, An Accumulation Of Material So Great, That Everything Starts Up Something Else In Me; What Should Take Weeks Take Me Sometimes Months To Write; What Should Take Months, Takes Years.

I Could Not Live By Literature If Only To Begin With, Because Of The Slow Maturing Of My Work And Its Special Character.