The aim of my writing is to utterly remove the distance between author and reader so that the book becomes a sort of semipermeable membrane through which feelings, ideas, nutrients pass.

You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.

And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.

I have accepted fear as a part of life - specifically the fear of change... I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back.

The stones themselves are thick with history, and those cats that dash through the alleyways must surely be the ghosts of the famous dead in feline disguise.

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.

Ambivalence is a wonderful tune to dance to. It has a rhythm all its own.

Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.

How wonderful to have someone to blame! How wonderful to live with one's nemesis! You may be miserable, but you feel forever in the right.

My generation was not only maligned in book reviews and attacked in graduate school but we lived to see our adored and adorable daughters wonder why feminism had become a dirty word.

I want to train my kids so where they are the only believers they can stand on their own two feet and teach others.

Fate never knows when comedy ends and tragedy begins.

Young women who I think do the best job of balancing family life and a big career start businesses or work for themselves. That's the best way of being in charge of your life.

Hired mourners at a funeral say and do - A little more than they whose grief is true

The New England conscience doesn't keep you from doing what you shouldn't - it just keeps you from enjoying it.

Theoretical Computer Science is just as useless as everything we mathematicians do.

The food here is so tasteless you could eat a meal of it and belch and it wouldn't remind you of anything.

I think you end up doing the stuff you were supposed to do at the time you were supposed to do it.

I believe that anybody with Mandela's capacity to endure hardship and then forgive is a born leader and example to us all.

Where thought is free in its range, we need never fear to hazard what is good in itself.