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.

Ardent, intelligent, sweet, sensitive, cultivated, erudite. These are the adjectives of praise in an androgynous world. Those who consider them epithets of shame or folly ought not to be trusted with leadership, for they will be men hot for power and revenge, certain of right and wrong.

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.

maturity ... is letting things happen.

People who are genuinely involved in life, not just living a routine they've contrived to protect them from disaster, always seem to have more demanded of them than they can easily take on.

You can flush my ashes down the toilet, for all I care.

That is the point of quotations. One can use another's words to be insulting.