We have had, alas, and still have, the doubtful habit of reverence. Above all, we respect things as they are.

I think about fanaticism - oblivion awaits, especially for minor writers, so you have to be a fanatic; you have to be a crank to keep going, but on the other hand, what else would you do with the rest of your life? You gotta do something.

After a certain number of years, our faces become our biographies.

The imagination has resources and intimations we don't even know about.

To desire to be what one can be is purpose in life. There are no exterior forces. There are only interior forces. Who squanders talent praises death.

literature is an instrument of a culture, not a summary of it.

Women who write with an overriding consciousness that they write as women are engaged not in aspiration toward writing, but chiefly in a politics of sex.