A dog is the only exercise machine you cannot decide to skip when you don't feel like it.

as the years go on a sense of deep patience comes over one; one seems to know the virtue of ripeness, and the danger of rushing events.

Ironically, women who acquire power are more likely to be criticized for it than are the men who have always had it.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.

I don't know why togetherness was ever held up as an ideal of marriage. Away from home for both, then together, that's much better.

A literary academic can no more pass a bookstore than an alcoholic can pass a bar.

We women have lived too much with closure: "If he notices me, if I marry him, if I get into college, if I get this work accepted, if I get this job" -- there always seems to loom the possibility of something being over, settled, sweeping clear the way for contentment. This is the delusion of a passive life. When the hope for closure is abandoned, when there is an end to fantasy, adventure for women will begin.