I believe we need literature, which, by allowing us to experience more fully, to imagine more fully, enables us to live more freely.

There is no neutrality. There is only greater or lesser awareness of one's bias.

The literature of women's lives is a tradition of escapees, women who have lived to tell the tale.

an autobiography held out the promise of hearing truths that only friends confess to one another but are knowledge you need to live.

Perhaps that is what love is -- the momentary or prolonged refusal to think of another person in terms of power.

biographies are a little like marriages: You only have room in your life for one or two.

One form of loneliness is to have a memory and no one to share it with.

the challenge of nonfiction is to marry art and truth.

The writer… begins in confusion and nothingness and writes his way into clarity.

Every reading is a misreading.

Truth is the irony of fate.

I'm not crazy about country-western music. But the lyrics are good. "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy" is pretty clever.

The king died and then the queen died is a story. The king died, and then queen died of grief is a plot.

I have no limits! I cannot be contained because I'm the container.

Staying in luxury hotels still gives me a kick, especially Oulton Hall in Yorkshire. I'd stay in a hotel for the breakfast and room service.

Friendship's an abstract of this noble flame, 'Tis love refin'd, and purged from all its dross, 'Tis next to angel's love, if not the same, As strong in passion is, though not so gross.

An acute first-class brain is the finest asset anyone can have- and, if we want to be happy, it is an asset we must exploit to the uttermost.

Well, I have also believed in empowering the individual and believe there is a degree of inertia in big government that hampers the ability to respond to a rapidly evolving crisis.

Sinful zeal doth make men doubly sinful.

Yet this my comfort: when your words are done, My woes end likewise with the evening sun.