There is simply no dignified way for a woman to live alone. Oh, she can get along financially perhaps (though not nearly as well as a man), but emotionally she is never left in peace. Her friends, her family, her fellow workers never let her forget that her husbandlessness, her childlessness - her selfishness, in short - is a reproach to the American way of life.

Silence is the bluntest of blunt instruments. It seems to hammer you into the ground. It drives you deeper and deeper into your own guilt. It makes the voices inside your head accuse you more viciously than any outside voices ever could.

I am never so calm as after I have written. And the next morning I will feel the familiar anxiety and I will have to begin the process all over again.

I didn't believe in systems. Everything human was imperfect and ultimately absurd. What did I believe in then? In humor. In laughing at systems, at people, at one's self. In laughing even at one's need to laugh all the time. In seeing life as contradictory, many-sided, various, funny, tragic, and with moments of outrageous beauty. In seeing life as a fruitcake, including delicious plums and bad peanuts, but meant to be devoured hungrily all the same because you couldn't feast on the plums without also sometimes being poisoned by the peanuts.

My reaction to porno films is as follows: After the first ten minutes, I want to go home and screw. After the first twenty minutes, I never want to screw again as long as I live.

I was surprised by my daughter's generation and how they were rebelling against the '70s idea that sex was perfect and it should be sought.

A new dog never replaces an old dog, it merely expands the heart.