Any system was a straightjacket if you insisted on adhering to it so totally and humorlessly.

Conflict is the soul of literature.

Sometimes it was worth all the disadvantages of marriage just to have that: one friend in an indifferent world.

Each one an antidote to the one that went before. Each one a reaction, an about-face, a rebound.

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.

Writing has often been accompanied by terror, silences, and then wild bursts of private laughter that suddenly make all the dread seem worthwhile.

There is still the feeling that women's writing is a lesser class of writing, that what goes on in the nursery or the bedroom is not as important as what goes on in the battlefield, that what women know about is a less category of knowledge.