A mother is always a mother, since a mother is a biological fact, whilst a father is a movable feast.

[T]ea, that uniquely English meal, that unnecessary collation at which no stimulants--neither alcohol nor meat--are served, that comforting repast of which to partake is as good as second childhood.

He was a lovely man in many ways. But he kept on insisting on forgiving me when there was nothing to forgive.

At the best of times, spring hurts depressives.

For most of human history, 'literature,' both fiction and poetry, has been narrated, not written — heard, not read. So fairy tales, folk tales, stories from the oral tradition, are all of them the most vital connection we have with the imaginations of the ordinary men and women whose labor created our world.

A book is simply the container of an idea-like a bottle; what is inside the book is what matters.

Mother is in herself a concrete denial of the idea of sexual pleasure since her sexuality has been placed at the service of reproductive function alone. She is the perpetually violated passive principle; her autonomy has been sufficiently eroded by the presence within her of the embryo she brought to term. Her unthinking ability to reproduce, which is her pride, is, since it is beyond choice, not a specific virtue of her own.