Quotes from Eileen Pollack

Many of my friends are scientists.

If you're the only anything in the room, you're going to feel so self-conscious of your right to be there.

When I was growing up, I wanted passionately to be a physicist.

When I was in 7th grade, we were all given an exam. It was science and math, and the boys who did well were skipped ahead so that when they got to be juniors or seniors in high school they would be able to go to the local community college and take calculus and physics there. And I wasn't skipped ahead.

I was nearly as far behind in calculus as I was in physics. But I wasn't the only woman in the class, so I felt more comfortable asking questions.

Judging the political climate in my state by walking around lefty Ann Arbor is like a polar bear judging global warming by staring at the ice cube beneath its feet.

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.

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.

Given that many girls are indoctrinated to believe that they should be feminine and modest about their abilities, as well as brought up to assume that girls are not innately gifted at science or math, it is not surprising that so few can see themselves as successful computer scientists.

The world is a complex place.

The most powerful determinant of whether a woman goes on in science might be whether anyone encourages her to go on.

When parents ask why there are still so few girls in advanced science and math classes in high school, I tell them, because girls still need way more encouragement than boys to take those courses.

I miss my former teachers, John Hersey and James Alan McPherson. I would love to see either or both and ask what I could do to improve, to deepen my writing.

Success in math and the hard sciences, far from being a matter of gender, is almost entirely dependent on culture - a culture that teaches girls math isn't cool and no one will date them if they excel in physics.

We still raise girls to look to other people for assurance they are attractive and smart, while boys are raised to determine their own value. Many girls are still made to feel it's not feminine to be good at science or math.

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.

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.

Writers find common ground not through the homelands they once inhabited but the thematic questions with which they grapple.

If you're making love to a man of God, then God must endorse your lovemaking.

I didn't stand up to my jailers because I realized how quickly I would have been overpowered.

You can't get sentimental about houses. Or bodies. They're just, I don't know, the Tupperware of the soul.

You pulled one story from your head, and another story popped up in its place, like tissues from a box.

But that (My brother's first science fair) project changed my life.

Science and math are hard for everybody, and it's usually not a matter or being born gifted at it or not. It's hard work, but it can be a lot of fun!