I suppose what one wants really is ideal company and books are ideal company.

Real love is a pilgrimage. It happens when there is no strategy, but it is very rare because most people are strategists.

Good women always think it is their fault when someone else is being offensive. Bad women never take the blame for anything.

Time misspent in youth is sometimes all the freedom one ever has.

Romanticism is not just a mode; it literally eats into every life. Women will never get rid of just waiting for the right man.

Accountability in friendship is the equivalent of love without strategy.

Always let them think of you as singing and dancing.

You never know what you will learn till you start writing. Then you discover truths you never knew existed.

The essence of romantic love is that wonderful beginning, after which sadness and impossibility may become the rule.

Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.

A man of such obvious and exemplary charm must be a liar.

Writing is a solitary occupation.

I want to change my punctuation. I long for exclamation marks, but I'm drowning in ellipses.

Without habitual self-examination, you can be hypocritical, but not see it.

All too often miners, and indeed other trade unionists, underestimate the economic strength they have.

Forgiveness is setting the prisoner free, only to find out that the prisoner was me.

Even people who don't believe in science still have to believe in gravity.

Over the years of much self-hate, I came to realize that whether sexuality was in my life or not, it didn't seem to matter. I just surrendered the whole thing to God.

Marriage is actually really terrifying. It doesn't work for many people.

I have to admit, a manicured look works for me.

The brain abhors discrepancies.