To live in a harmonious balance of commitments and pleasures is what I strive for.

People genuinely happy in their choices seem less often tempted to force them on other people than those who feel martyred and broken by their lives.

Every artist seems to me to have the job of bearing witness to the world we live in. To some extent I think of all of us as artists, because we have voices and we are each of us unique.

The message of women's liberation is that women can love each other and ourselves against our degrading education.

I didn't want to be a boy, ever, but I was outraged that his height and intelligence were graces for him and gaucheries for me.

Morality is a test of our conformity rather than our integrity.

My private measure of success is daily. If this were to be the last day of my life would I be content with it? To live in a harmonious balance of commitments and pleasures is what I strive for.

I've never been resigned to ready-made ideas as I was to ready-made clothes, perhaps because although I couldn't sew, I could think.

If we don't bear witness as citizens, as people, as individuals, the right that we have had to life is sacrificed. There is a silence, instead of a speaking presence.

Morality, like language, is an invented structure for conserving and communicating order. And morality is learned, like language, by mimicking and remembering.

I had always said to myself that forty was the cut off point of my apprenticeship which may for some people sound like a very long one, but the novel as art is a middle-aged art.

Sometimes we have spent so long in the cage that it feels safer to be trapped inside.

The irony of rule followers is they often quote a lot of people that do not follow as many rules as they do.

I want all my pain to count for something.

It's Godlike to love man - even in his sin - merely because he's man.

I'm a bit of a tomboy, but when it comes to love I am a doormat.

not all bears have their own television series. Some of them are unemployed wild animals.

Surround yourself with what you love, whether it's family, pets, keepsakes, music, plants, hobbies, whatever.

It is a poor dog that is not worth the whistling

We live in a world of outrageous pain. The only response to outrageous pain is outrageous love.