One hires lawyers as on hires plumbers, because one wants to keep one's hands off the beastly drains.

I don't know why togetherness was ever held up as an ideal of marriage. Away from home for both, then together, that's much better.

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.

Androgyny suggests a spirit of reconciliation between the sexes; it suggests, further, a full range of experience…it suggests a spectrum upon which human beings choose their places without regard to propriety or custom.

Is there any vanity greater than the vanity of those who believe themselves without it?

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

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.