The sign of a good marriage is that everything is debatable and challenged; nothing is turned into law or policy. The rules, if any, are known only to the two players, who seek no public trophies.

It's hard to be happy, and safe, and applauded in a miserable world.

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.

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

Power consists to a large extent in deciding what stories will be told.

Androgyny suggests a spirit of reconciliation between the sexes.

The compulsion to find a lover and husband in a single person has doomed more women to misery than any other illusion.