..though silence must add intensity to your intimate moments, it must also shrivel your soul to lie beside someone who doesn't talk to you.

My life burned inside me. Even such as it was, it was the only record of me, and it was my only creation, and something in me would not accept that it was insignificant.

...friendship is something you do.

Do the thing that's less passive. Do the active thing. There's more of the human in that.

If there were nothing else, reading would--obviously--be worth living for.

The wait is long, my dream of you does not end.

I did believe, from my experience of life and of looking at the world, that men hated women.

Lovers are allowed to be as cruel as anything to the one who dissappoints them.

Did anyone ever hear of an intelligent fantasy?

A bugler sounded the Last Post. Heartbreak made audible.

I.B.M. was my college education, effectively. They were very good at teaching you management.

I get to a certain point, and I think in a novel it's about the third draft, when I want other eyes on it.

If I find myself half-carelessly taking lapses for granted, "Oh, that's what they always do." "Oh, of course she talks like that, he acts like that," then I know nothing of Calvary love.

I do not speak for the White House correspondents association. I'm not a member.

What I was reading was already part of my psyche, but finally someone else was saying it's okay to walk alone.

Moderation, we find, is an extremely difficult thing to get in this country.

I will devote my body and soul to the service of the people and the nation.

Creativity is the greatest rebellion in existence.

People have so manipulated the concept of freedom that it finally boils down to the right of the stronger and richer to take from the weaker and poorer whatever they still have.

Ideals survive through change. They die through inertia in the face of challenge.