Most full lives are filled with empty gestures.

To recommend that women become identical to men, would be simple reversal, and would defeat the whole point of androgyny, and for that matter, feminism: in both, the whole point is choice.

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

One cannot make up stories; one can only retell in new ways the stories one has already heard.

Quoting, like smoking, ... is a dirty habit to which I am devoted. But then ... I am a professor of English literature; it is an occupational hazard.

New York is not like London, a now-and-then place to many people. You can either not live in New York or not live anyplace else. One is either a lover or hater.

Only a marriage with partners strong enough to risk divorce is strong enough to avoid it.