Books everywhere. On the shelves and on the small space above the rows of books and all along the floor and under chairs, books that I have read, books that I have not read.

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

Kindness. The most unkind thing of all.

The vote means nothing to women. We should be armed.

...people liking you or not liking you is an accident and is to do with them and not you. That goes for love too, only more so.

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.