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The truth is, the less a subject had to do with the visible world, the more talented I was at solving problems.
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Writers find common ground not through the homelands they once inhabited but the thematic questions with which they grapple.
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Knowing how to tactfully criticize someone's work is a mentor's job.
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Figuring out why people who choose not to do something don't in fact do it is like attempting to interview the elves who live inside your refrigerator but come out only when the light is off.
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My parents didn't know how to provide me with the encouragement I needed to achieve my dreams.
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Parents don't want their kids to be nerdy.
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For the individual and for society, the more diversity you have in a field means more ways of solving a problem as well as more creativity and originality.
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I think women need to hear more encouragement in any field, because I see it - I teach creative writing. And even though it's mostly women in the room, they're not often - or they didn't used to be the ones who went on to publish books. I know this sounds like a tautology, but encouragement is the key.
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When I left Yale, it was so painful to me. I had worked so hard, gotten so far, and just walked away.
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Wandering the book fair at AWP is a great way to get acquainted with a wide sampling of the diverse journals that are out there and the wide sampling of people who produce them.
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I don't usually feel threatened by the militias. Most members are just indulging their fantasies of being warriors without having to sign up for the Army. They want to be heroes and save their neighbors from disaster.
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The most powerful determinant of whether a woman goes on in science might be whether anyone encourages her to go on.
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If there's a stereotype that you're not supposed to be good at something, that still gets so badly in your way of concentrating.
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Combating any kind of obstacle is much easier if you know that it's real and not your fault, and it's something you can fight against.
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If a person's self-worth derives from being the only woman in the field, how much affection can she feel toward another woman who might challenge that claim to fame?
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As a physics major at Yale in the 1970s, I developed crushes on nearly all my male professors.
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We forget how recently astronomers figured out what the stars are made of, what makes them shine, how distant they are, how they are born, and whether they remain immutable or evolve and die.