We cannot guess the outcome of our actions... Which is why our actions must always be acceptable in themselves, and not as strategies.

Thinking about profound social change, conservatives always expect disaster, while revolutionaries confidently anticipate utopia. Both are wrong.

One cannot make up stories; one can only retell in new ways the stories one has already heard.

Today's shocks are tomorrow's conventions.

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.

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.

Ideas move fast when their time comes.