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.

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.

One hires lawyers as on hires plumbers, because one wants to keep one's hands off the beastly drains.

Normal is absolutely my least favorite word.

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.

one sank into the ancient sin of anomie when challenges failed.