If we don't risk anything, we risk even more.

I tried to keep myself away from him by using con words like "fidelity" and "adultery", by telling myself that he would interfere with my work, that I had him I'd be too happy to write. I tried to tell myself I was hurting Bennett, hurting myself, making a spectacle of myself. I was. But nothing helped. I was possessed. The minute he walked into a room and smiled at me, I was a goner.

I think men have always been afraid of women's sexuality, and the restrictions they put on women testify to that.

I want you. I want you. I want you. Anything to avoid saying: I love you.

Anybody who instantly goes from being a poet and a graduate student to being a public figure has to be in a state of shock. First people want to praise you, and then they want to attack you. No one can prepare you for it.

I believe I belong to the last literary generation, the last generation, that is, for whom books are a religion.

Is there a phrase in the English language more fraught with menace than a tax audit?