Writing is like carrying a fetus.

She said the reason that love is so painful is that it always amounts to two people wanting more than two people can give.

To live with the work and the letters of James Joyce was an enormous privilege and a daunting education. Yes, I came to admire Joyce even more because he never ceased working, those words and the transubstantiation of words obsessed him. He was a broken man at the end of his life, unaware that Ulysses would be the number one book of the twentieth century and, for that matter, the twenty-first.

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.

Darkness is drawn to light, but light does not know it; light must absorb the darkness and therefore meet its own extinguishment.

jealousy is the direct result of self-betrayal.