My generation was not only maligned in book reviews and attacked in graduate school but we lived to see our adored and adorable daughters wonder why feminism had become a dirty word.

Women's books are kind of discriminated against. If a man writes a book about his family stories, people think of it as literature. If it's a woman, she's 'spilling her guts,' and it's not art.

The problem with feminism in the second wave was that we fought so much among ourselves, and I think we did so much damage to the movement... and I think the next wave, the third wave, is women mentoring younger women and women helping younger women to enter the political process and the writing world.

I think feminism means what it has always meant - women want to use all their gifts, all their talents and be judged impartially for them. I don't think feminism has ever meant anything else.

I worked in a boutique after work, my second job, selling women's clothes. And that was a way of not just making money but meeting women. That was very exciting job. I loved that job.

What I feel is that we need an independent consumer watchdog. You have regular people who have problems with big financial companies. How do they get relief? And you need somebody who's gonna stand on their side and level the playing field for them.

I think that not being all that overwhelmed by good reviews is a luxury. I'm like a rich person who says he doesn't care about money.

When I was a kid, there were no credit cards. Instead, retailers offered layaway plans. My mom would go to a store, such as a furniture outlet, choose the sofa she wanted, and put it on layaway. That meant she put a little money down to hold the sofa, and every payday she'd pay a little toward the purchase.