Countries are either mothers or fathers, and engender the emotional bristle secretly reserved for either sire.

I did not sleep. I never do when I am over-happy, over-unhappy, or in bed with a strange man.

All my life I had feared imprisonment, the nun's cell, the hospital bed, the places where one faced the self without distraction, without the crutches of other people.

History is said to be written by the victors. Fiction, by contrast, is largely the work of injured bystanders.

shadows of love, inebriations of love, foretastes of love, trickles of love, but never yet the one true love.

Life, after all, was a secret with the self. The more one gave out, the less there remained for the center--that center which she coveted for herself and recognized instantly in others. Fruits had it, the very heart of, say, a cherry, where the true worth and flavor lay. Some of course were flawed or hollow in there. Many, in fact.

It's not the vote women need, we should be armed.