To survive, each sentence must have, at its heart, a little spark of fire, and this, whatever the risk, the novelist must pluck with his own hands from the blaze.

She dares me to pour myself out like a living waterfall. She dares me to enter the soul that is more than my own; she extinguishes fear in mere seconds. She lets light come through.

A feminist is any woman who tells the truth about her life

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

A self that goes on changing is a self that goes on living.

I have a deeply hidden and inarticulate desire for something beyond the daily life.

I see you everywhere, in the stars, in the river, to me you're everything that exists; the reality of everything.

The only advice ... that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions.

No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.

Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.

Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.

There are certain things in life that you'll be forgiven for, no matter how thoughtless or stupid or reckless, but if you do that same thing twice, you're on your own.

I had fallen out of my secure world, precipitated beyond the territories I had only begun to control so skillfully. What a foolish step to take. What an insane move to make.

Fritz was melancholic by nature, and could tolerate his own gloom. I do not think this is so with you, who are sanguine and impatient. In your case, remorse and despondency could be crippling.

I'm very politically active, but that has nothing to do with my charity.

Freedom which has genuine meaning is more than a timeless abstraction, more than an absence of restraints.

I hope nobody I wrote about becomes too upset.

You need people who are shaping and advocating for the actual policies and structural changes that need to occur in order to address those issues. That's where the politics and t

Let's begin to cover the main street of America... just to see what the heck occurs on it.

The American male doesn't mature until he has exhausted all other possibilities.

Between the acting of a dreadful thing And the first motion, all the interim is Like a phantasma or a hideous dream.