You never know what you will learn till you start writing. Then you discover truths you never knew existed.

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

Time misspent in youth is sometimes all the freedom one ever has.

There are moments when you feel free, moments when you have energy, moments when you have hope, but you can't rely on any of these things to see you through. Circumstances do that.

To remain pure, a novel has to cast a moral puzzle. Anything else is mere negotiation.

Problems of human behavior still continue to baffle us, but at least in the Library we have them properly filed.

Like many rich men, he thought in anecdotes; like many simple women, she thought in terms of biography.