A dreary censorship, and self-censorship, has been imposed on books by the centralization of the book industry.

Not everybody has to be a parent. In fact, in an overpopulated world where our resources are shrinking, it would be wonderful if people who didn't want children felt free to say so. In the 1970s, there was more tolerance for the idea that not everybody needs to be a biological parent.

Someday every woman will have orgasms- like every family has color TV- and we can all get on with the business of life.

Always do the things you fear the most. Courage is an acquired taste, like caviar.

I can live without it all - love with its blood pump, sex with its messy hungers, men with their peacock strutting, their silly sexual baggage, their wet tongues in my ear.

All authors know that any book is a casting of runes, a reading of cards, a map of the palm and heart. We make up the ocean - then fall in. But we also write the life raft.

You should write first drafts as if they will never be shown to anyone.