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.

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.

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

As long as women are isolated one from the other, not allowed to offer other women the most personal accounts of their lives, they will not be part of any narratives of their own…women will be staving off destiny and not inviting or inventing or controlling it.

A literary academic can no more pass a bookstore than an alcoholic can pass a bar.

Whether deliberately, unconsciously or accidentally, she seems to have composed her own life so that its fitful, rudderless, and self-doubting first half was alchemized into gold when the austere bluestocking became the fallen woman.

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