Beauty is the first present nature gives to women and the first it takes away.

If you do nothing unexpected, nothing unexpected happens.

Nothing happens, and nothing happens, and then everything happens.

There's no such thing as old age, there is only sorrow.

Only one thing registers on the subconscious mind: repetitive application - practice. What you practice is what you manifest.

I didn't even know I was a feminist until I read it on the back of one of my own books.

The desire for self-expression afflicts people when they feel there is something of themselves which is not getting through to the outside world.

Fiction stretches our sensibilities and our understanding, as mere information never can.

Marriage is a very difficult relationship for nearly everyone and I'm sure you shouldn't do it if you want a quiet little easy life.

guilt to motherhood is like grapes to wine

She could see that to lose a sibling was hard: it could only seem unnatural:out of time, out of order, a vicious re-run of your own departure into nothingness.

Ennui had more distractions far more amusing than the automatons of a watchmaker in Mühlenberg.

Baseball has so much history and tradition. You can respect it, or you can exploit it for profit, but it's still being made all over the place, all the time.

We failed, but in the good providence of God apparent failure often proves a blessing.

Slater soaks into the mind as water into low and marshy places, where it becomes stagnant and offensive.

But when we came out of camp, that's when I first realized that being in camp, that being Japanese-American, was something shameful.

Galleries began growing in both number and size in the late seventies, when artists who worked in lofts wanted to exhibit their work in spaces similar to the ones the art was made in.

Somebody once said to me if you want to be understood, don't write fiction.

You can find that sort of regularity in Stock Exchange quotations.

An economist is someone who knows all the answers to last years' questions.

I always thought the idea of education was to learn to think for yourself.