Wouldn't the worst be, isn't the worst, in truth, that women aren't castrated, that they have only to stop listening to the Sirens (for the Sirens were men) for history to change its meaning?

You only have to look at the Medusa straight on to see her. And she's not deadly. She's beautiful and she's laughing.

Thinking is trying to think the unthinkable: thinking the thinkable is not worth the effort.

Censor the body and you censor breath and speech at the same time. Write yourself. Your body must be heard.

We must learn to speak the language women speak when there is no one there to correct us.

Writing is the passageway, the entrance, the exit, the dwelling place of the other in me.

We must kill the false woman who is preventing the live one from breathing.

The only book that is worth writing is the one we don’t have the courage or strength to write. The book that hurts us (we who are writing), that makes us tremble, redden, bleed

Everything ends with flowers.

I am not innocent. Innocence is a science of the sublime. And I am only at the very beginning of the apprenticeship.

I do believe in poetry. I believe that there are creatures endowed with the power to put things together and bring them back to life

...we steal with our eyes closed to the conditions in which the poor, who make our affluence possible, live. We covet what our neighbours have and want more of the same.

The finest inheritance you can give a child is to allow it to make its own way completely on its own feet.

You have had your last bad meal. But, you have also heard your last honest compliment, and you have lost your last true friend.

Usually I get up early every morning and from 6:00 to 10:00 I write. The rest of the time I study and prepare my work or I do other things. But four hours a day are exclusively devoted to writing.

Reality, whether approached imaginatively or empirically, remains a surface, hermetic.

She stroked my hair and told me I was beautiful, but I was old enough by then to know not to believe it anymore.

Well, isn’t that interesting. (Bubba) I ain’t your science experiment, Bubba. I don’t want to be interesting and I definitely don’t want to be a nubby treat for the zombies. (Nick)

One of the most important things in politics is you've got to keep your mind infinitely curious and alive to what is happening differently.

The Chinese, whom it might be well to disparage less and imitate more, seem almost the only people among whom learning and merit have the ascendency, and wealth is not the standard of estimation.

A middle-aged cat will often play as unreservedly as a kitten, though he knows perfectly well it is only a game.