Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I am what would be called a 'mainstream feminist,' not a radical feminist.
The greatest works of literature seem to embody both "art" and "morality".
Very few writers of distinction in fact were outstanding as undergraduates.
I am the presence standing here at this juncture of Time & Space- who else?
Our enemy is by tradition our savior, in preventing us from superficiality.
There is something thrilling in the mimesis of life's surprising unfolding.
I feel a terrible loss when I (eventually must) complete a work of fiction.
The great menace to the life of an industry is industrial self-complacency.
I have beliefs, of course, like everyone-but I don't always believe in them.
Yet I will make you all love me and I will punish myself to spite your love.
On the elusive gift of blending austerity of craft with elasticity of allure.
The denial of language is a suicidal one and we pay for it with our own lives.
Sometimes I stumble upon a wonderfully irresistible to me voice, unexpectedly.
To be knocked out doesn't mean what it seems. A boxer does not have to get up.
Not to be alone. To be spared the possibility of knowing oneself, in aloneness.
One writes to memorialize, and to bring to life again that which has been lost.
Was it confusing because it was artistic, or artistic because it was confusing?
Love is an indescribable sensation - perhaps a conviction, a sense of certitude.
Life is like boxing in many unsettling respects. But boxing is only like boxing.
At all crucial moments in our lives we want to speak without knowing what to say.
It's not hard to write poorly. But to write something good, it has to be revised.
I'm drawn to failure. I feel like I'm contending with it constantly in my own life.
Betrayal is the deepest wound. Betrayal is what remains of love, when love has gone.
It's where we go, and what we do when we get there, that tells us who we really are.
"Because there has been no one to stop me" has been one of the principles of my life.
I am concerned with only one thing, the moral and social conditions of my generation.
Better to be despised, then, than to be ignored; or damned with condescending praise.
The danger of motherhood. you relive your early self, through the eyes of your mother.
My role models were childless: Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, George Eliot, the Brontes.
For what is delusion but the prelude to hurt. And what is hurt but the prelude to rage.
Reading yields a wish to write, I think, except if the reading is dull and uninspiring.
For memory is a moral action, a choice. You can choose to remember. You can choose not.
Writing is a consequence of having been 'haunted' by material. Why this is, no one knows.
Her problem wasn't she was a dumb blonde, it was she wasn't a blonde and she wasn't dumb.
Obviously the imagination is fueled by emotions beyond the control of the conscious mind.
I learned long ago that being Lewis Carroll was infinitely more exciting than being Alice.
Her wish to die was as pervasive as a dial tone: you lift the receiver, it's always there.
It's one of those secrets that's embarrassing to acknowledge, but we do love our students.
My parents were very proud of me. After they passed, my career doesn't mean as much to me.
Technique holds a reader from sentence to sentence, but only content will stay in his mind.
Loneliness is like starvation: you don't realize how hungry you are until you begin to eat.
It must happen to everyone. The last time you make love, you can't know it will be the last.
The greatest realities are physical and economic, all the subtleties of life come afterward.
I used to think getting old was about vanity but actually it's about losing people you love.
Cherie, keep walking. Shut your eyes. We are headed for the bridge. We are going to cross it.
"Politics" per se is absent from my writing but there is usually a moral (if ironic) compass.
Novels begin, not on the page, but in meditation and day-dreaming - In thinking, not writing.
The folly of war is that it can have no natural end except in the extinction an entire people.
Like a flame is real enough, isn't it, while it's burning?-even if there's a time it goes out?
Writing! The activity for which the only adequate bribe is the possibility of suicide, one day.