Coupling doesn't always have to do with sex ... Two people holding each other up like flying buttresses. Two people depending on each other and babying each other and defending each other against the world outside. Sometimes it was worth all the disadvantages of marriage just to have that: one friend in an indifferent world.

If there's anything the world disdains more than uppity young women, it's uppity old women. Dying young has always been a woman's best career move.

As a past president of the Writers Guild, I think women shouldn't write for free. Maybe you have to do it for a time, to make a reputation, but I think the idea of giving your work away is the beginning of authors not being able to make a living.

The truth is simple, you do not die from love. You only wish you did.

It was easy enough to kill yourself in a fit of despair. It was easy enough to play the martyr. It was harder to do nothing. To endure your life. To wait.

Without the gods, how would I sing?' I asked. With your own voice,' he said.

Being a daughter is only half the equation; bearing one is the other.