My own funeral, I'd like to be laid out in a coffin in my own house. I would like my coffin to be put in the double parlor, and I would like all the flowers to be white.

The truth is most women are weak, be they mortal or immortal. But when they are strong, they are absolutely unpredictable.

I stumble through a carnival of horrors

I never knew what life was until it ran out in a red gush over any lips, my hands!

You have made me ashamed of the wasted years. You have made me acknowledge that no darkness has ever been deep enough to extinguish my personal knowledge of love. And all around me in this world I see evidence of love. I see love. I see it in the human struggle. I see its undeniable penetration in all that humans have accomplished in their poetry, their painting, their music, their love of one another and refusal to accept suffering as their lot.

Being liberated means reading what you want to read, and fantasizing about what you want to fantasize about.

I never lie," I said offhand. "At least not to those I don't love.