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

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.

Today's youth seem finally to have understood that only by freeing woman from her exclusively sexual role can man free himself from his ordained role in the rat-race: that of the rat.

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.

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