Irish was a man of parts even if some of them didn't work too well.

Cities have sexes: London is a man, Paris a woman, and New York a well-adjusted transsexual.

I know that whenever a group of women are gathered together, the grandmother always makes a phantom appearance, hovering above them.

As for my father, few souls are less troubled. He can be simply pleased with us, pleased that we exist, and, from the vantage point of his wondrously serene old age, he contemplates our lives almost as if they were books he can dip into whenever he wants. His back pages, perhaps.

A fairy tale is the kind of story in which one king goes to another king to borrow a cup of sugar

And, oh God, in my misspent youth as a housewife, I, too, used to bake bread, in those hectic and desolating days just prior to the woman's movement, when middle-class women were supposed to be wonderful wives and mothers, gracious hostesses.... I used to feel so womanly when I was baking my filthy bread.

I see her as a series of marvellous shapes formed at random in the kaleidoscope of desire.