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I went through college in the 1960s without having any idea that I was going to have to make a living. When I graduated in 1968 it was quite a shock to find out that there was a world out there and that it wasn't going to support me.

I'm self-made. I always wanted to make myself a better person, because I was not educated. But that was my dream - to have class.

I never imagined when I began writing in the early 1960s I'd become professional and my life would be transformed.

As an academic, this was not the lifestyle I had planned for myself. Now I see myself everywhere.

I've always had a hunger for realizing myself through my career.

I remember being young in the 1960s... we had a great sense of the future, a great big hope. This is what is missing in the youth today. This being able to dream and to change the world.

I'm used to the egos in the 1960s, '70s and '80s where people just expected massive success and thought it was their birth right to be successful.

Whatever I did in 1960, half a century ago, I couldn't do that today and enter the field. The field has changed so much, you have to adapt to the times whatever you're doing. That's the reality of life: you have to be a different person today than you had to be then.

In the late 1950s, self-esteem hadn't yet been invented. High schools saw their sole mission as preparing students thoroughly for academic work.

I grew up a middle class, colonized child of teachers and librarians and people, women especially, who treasured education.