There was a danger whenever I was on home ground. It was the danger of seeing my life through other eyes than my own. Seeing it as an ever-increasing roll of words like barbed wire, intricate, bewildering, uncomforting—set against the rich productions, the food, flowers, and knitted garments, of other women’s domesticity. It became harder to say that it was worth the trouble.

There would never be any room in her for anything else. No room for anything but the realization of what she had done.

Now i no longer believe that people's secrets are defined and communicable, or their feelings full-blown and easy to recognize.

Lovers. Not a soft word, as people thought, but cruel and tearing.

Anecdotes don't make good stories. Generally I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.

I was amazed as people must be who are seized and kidnapped, and who realize that in the strange world of their captors they have a value absolutely unconnected with anything they know about themselves.

Life would be grand if it weren't for the people.