I've liked life well enough, but I reckon I'll like death even better as soon as I've gotten used to the feel of it. ... I shouldn't be amazed to find it less lonely than life after I'm once safely settled.

... beauty, like ecstasy, has always been hostile to the commonplace. And the commonplace, under its popular label of the normal,has been the supreme authority for Homo sapiens since the days when he was probably arboreal.

Experience has taught me that the only cruelties people condemn are those with which they do not happen to be familiar.

Knowledge, like experience, is valid in fiction only after it has dissolved and filtered down through the imagination into reality.

irony is an indispensable ingredient of the critical vision; it is the safest antidote to sentimental decay.

What fools people are when they think they can make two lives belong together by saying words over them.

I was always a feminist, for I liked intellectual revolt as much as I disliked physical violence. On the whole, I think women havelost something precious, but have gained, immeasurably, by the passing of the old order.