Most full lives are filled with empty gestures.

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

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.

Professors of literature collect books the way a ship collects barnacles, without seeming effort.

Once you are thought selfish, not only are you forgiven a life designed mainly to suit yourself, which in anyone else would appear monstrous, but if an impulse to generosity should by chance overpower you, you will get five times the credit of some poor selfless soul who has been oozing kindness for years.

Quoting, like smoking, is a dirty habit to which I am devoted.

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.