I have a great ability to improvise verbally and I am very funny on a dime.

To be one woman, truly, wholly, is to be all women. Tend one garden and you will birth worlds.

Just being in a room with myself is almost more stimulation than I can bear.

Whenever I get lost in a novel I just throw a poem in. What it does is flare up, and it's so illuminated that I'm able to see where to go. I write between these illuminations.

I write a lot by sound. One sound leads me to another. These sounds aren't random; they have their own logic.

In communist countries, you execute your poets. In the free world, the poets execute themselves.

All good writing is built one good line at a time. You build a novel the same way you do a pyramid. One word, one stone at a time, underneath a full moon while the fingers bleed.

Women have waited millions of years, growing separate as another species, with visions and priorities no man-words, no man-measurements can comprehend.

If you can be anything else but a writer, be it.

Women are defined by their biography, and men are sacrosanct from their biography.

As a citizen of the post-historical variety, I am in continual mourning and prepared for worse.

The only man who never makes mistakes is the man who never does anything.

Perhaps the logical conclusion of everyone looking the same is everyone thinking the same.

The final proof of greatness lies in being able to endure criticism without resentment.

Indian culture is essentially much more of a we culture. It's a communal culture where you do what's best for the community - you procreate.

Gratitude is a soil on which joy thrives.

Dead women tell no tales. Sad men write them down.

The principle itself of dogmatic religion, dogmatic morality, dogmatic philosophy, is what requires to be booted out; not any particular manifestation of that principle.

Love never doubts or suffers or cries. Love shows no fear, love tells no lies.

Too many films today feel formulaic and familiar. I prefer it when the familiar is made to feel strange.

Let not our babbling dreams affright our souls; Conscience is but a work that cowards use, Devised at first to keep the strong in awe: Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law!