If you have yet to be called an incorrigable, defiant woman, don't worry, there is still time

When a woman is frozen of feeling, when she can no longer feel herself, when her blood, her passion, no longer reach the extremities of her psyche, when she is desperate; then a fantasy life is far more pleasurable than anything else she can set her sights upon. Her little match lights, because they have no wood to burn, instead burn up the psyche as though it were a big dry log. The psyche begins to play tricks on itself; it lives now in the fantasy fire of all yearning fulfilled. This kind of fantasizing is like a lie: If you tell it often enough, you begin to believe it.

The point of art is not simply to express ourselves, but to create an external, concrete form in which the soul of our lives can be evoked and contained.

When women are relegated to moods, mannerisms, and contours that conform to a single ideal of beauty and behavior, they are captured in both body and soul, and are no longer free.

Failure is a greater teacher than success

Writing, real writing, should leave a small sweet bruise somewhere on the writer . . . and on the reader.

Dogs are the magicians of the universe.