Quotes from her Composing a Life (1989)
- “Fluidity and discontinuity are central to the reality in which we live. Women have always lived discontinuous and contingent lives, but men today are newly vulnerable, which turns women’s traditional adaptations into a resource.”
- “Unless teachers can hold up a model of lifelong learning and adaptation, graduates are likely to find themselves trapped into obsolescence as the world changes around them. Of any stopping place in life, it is good to ask whether it will be a good place from which to go on as well as a good place to remain.”
- “The need to sustain human growth should be a matter of concern for the entire society, even more fundamental than the problem of sustaining productivity. This, surely, is the deepest sense of homemaking, whether in a factory or a college or a household. For all of us, continuing development depends on nurture and guidance long after the years of formal education.”
- “Sharing is sometimes more demanding than giving; Americans often find it difficult to tolerate the level of interdependence involved in carpooling or sharing a laundry room in an apartment building. My efforts to stretch resources at Amherst by promoting sharing and interdepartmental cooperation were regarded as both galling and sinister.”
- “What we need today is not to apply more technology to housework, or even to teach those who do housework to avoid nonbiodegradable detergents or aerosols. We must transform our attitude toward all productive work and toward the planet into expressions of homemaking, where we create and sustain the possibility of life.”
