Men are irrelevant. Women are happy or unhappy, fulfilled or unfulfilled, and it has nothing to do with men.

She could see that to lose a sibling was hard: it could only seem unnatural:out of time, out of order, a vicious re-run of your own departure into nothingness.

Marriage is what happens when one at least of the partners doesn't want the other to get away.

Writers are always a great nuisance to publishers. If they could do without them, they would.

Much sheer effort goes into avoiding the truth; left to itself, it sweeps in like the tide.

One must be careful with words. Words turn probabilities into facts and by sheer force of definition translate tendencies into habits.

Poetry, I thought then, and still do, is a matter of space on the page interrupted by a few well-chosen words, to give them importance. Prose is a less grand affair which has to stretch to the edges of the page to be convincing.