A woman can look both moral and exciting... if she also looks as if it was quite a struggle.

I sat staring up at a shelf in my workroom from which thirty-one books identically dressed in neat dark green leather stared back at me with a sort of cold hostility like children who resent their parents. Don't stare at us like that! they said. Don't blame us if we didn't turn out to be the perfection you expected. We didn't ask to be brought into the world.

America -- rather, the United States -- seems to me to be the Jew among the nations. It is resourceful, adaptable, maligned, envied, feared, imposed upon. It is warm-hearted, over-friendly; quick-witted, lavish, colorful; given to extravagant speech and gestures; its people are travelers and wanderers by nature, moving, shifting, restless; swarming in Fords, in ocean liners; craving entertainment; volatile. The chuckle among the nations of the world.

A story must simmer in its own juice for months or even years before it's ready to serve.

No woman ought to pretend she's intelligent. And if she is she ought to have the intelligence to pretend she isn't.

If men ever discovered how tough women actually are, they would be scared to death.

If American politics are too dirty for women to take part in, there's something wrong with American politics.