Warmth, perfume, rugs, soft lights, books. They do not appease me. I am aware of time passing, of all the world contains that I have not seen, of all the interesting people I have not met.

We are all engaged in the task of peeling off the false selves, the programmed selves, the selves created by our families, our culture, our religions. It is an enormous task because the history of women has been as incompletely told as the history of blacks.

Truth is something which can't be told in a few words. Those who simplify the universe only reduce the expansion of its meaning.

Create a world, your world. Alone. Stand alone. And then love will come to you, then it comes to you.

Death from disillusion is not instantaneous, and there are no mercy killers for the disillusioned.

It amazes me that you feel that each time you write a story you give away one of your dreams and you feel the poorer for it. But then you have not thought that this dream is planted in others, others begin to live it too, it is shared, it is the beginning of friendship and love. How is this world made which you enjoy, the friends around me that you love? They came because I first gave away my stories.

Stories are the only enchantment possible, for when we begin to see our suffering as a story, we are saved.