Writers in a profit making economy are an exploitable commodity whose works are products to be marketed, and are so judged and handled.

That's what I want to be when I grow up, just a peaceful wreck holding hands with other peaceful wrecks.

Women have the right to say: this is surface, this falsifies reality, this degrades.

The clock talked loud. I threw it away, it scared me what it talked.

More than in any other human relationship, overwhelmingly more, motherhood means being instantly interruptible, responsive, and responsible

She would not exchange her solitude for anything. Never again to be forced to move to the rhythms of others.

Better immersion than to live untouched.

It is a long baptism into the seas of humankind, my daughter. Better immersion than to live untouched.

And when is there time to remember, to sift, to weigh, to estimate, to total?

Not to have an audience is a kind of death.

It's hard for me to talk about the terrible things that have happened in my lifetime because they didn't need to be.

The only thing you really have to prove is yourself.

Say you were standing with one foot in the oven and one foot in an ice bucket. According to the percentage people you would be perfectly comfortable.

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.

More than fans, they felt like a team of morale-boosters who would always be around to remind me of my own worth

She read Dickens in the spirit in which she would have eloped with him.

Do not ask for fears to be removed; ask for courage equal to the fears.

A feast not profuse but elegant; more of salt [refinement] than of expense.

God loves me. I'm not here just to fill a place, just to be a number. He has chosen me for a purpose. I know it.

The world, I think, has too many late-night talk shows.

We learn geology the morning after the earthquake.