It takes courage to lead a life. Any life.

Eating is never so simple as hunger.

Home is where your books are.

certain very old people reach an age where every funeral becomes some sort of insane confirmation of strength, rather than of vulnerability, as it is when we are in our thirties or forties and our friends die.

Most sex doesn't really bring people together. You have to reach a certain level of connection, I think, and that's pretty rare.

My mother wanted me to be her wings, to fly as she never quite had the courage to do. I love her for that. I love the fact that she wanted to give birth to her own wings.

My generation was not only maligned in book reviews and attacked in graduate school but we lived to see our adored and adorable daughters wonder why feminism had become a dirty word.