The lessons taught in great books are misleading. The commerce in life is rarely so simple and never so just.

For once a thing is known, it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten.

Writing has freed me from the despair of living.

I was brought up among the sort of self-important women who had a husband as one has an alibi.

A complete woman is probably not a very admirable creature. She is manipulative, uses other people to get her own way, and works within whatever system she is in.

One loses the capacity to grieve as a child grieves, or to rage as a child rages: hotly, despairingly, with tears of passion. One grows up, one becomes civilized, one learns one's manners, and consequently can no longer manage these two functions - sorrow and anger - adequately.

Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.