Much later I realized that a person's attitude to pain reveals more about his future than almost any other sign I know.

Much later I realized that a person's attitude to pain reveals more about his future than almost any other sign I know.

Between killing and dying there's a third way: live

There are secrets that ravage you, others that make you stronger.

Night thoughts have a different color than day thoughts, a different slant, more than anything else they know all the secret paths and chinks in the armor they can take advantage of to force their way into consciousness.

Now writing is just working your way toward the border that the innermost secret draws around itself, and to cross that line would mean self-destruction. But writing is also an attempt to respect the borderline only for the truly innermost secret, and bit by bit to free the taboos around that core, difficult to admit as they are, from their prison of unspeakability. Not self-destruction but self-redemption. Not being afraid of unavoidable suffering.

I claim that every woman in this century and in our culture sphere who has ventured into male-dominated institutions - 'literature' and 'aesthetics' are such institutions - must have experienced the desire for self-destruction.