Well, by now you must know yourself, honey, whatever you do, life don't stop. It only sits a minute and dreams a dream.

Write what will stop your breath if you don’t write.

The women's movement was coming, but I didn't know it in 1956-1957, when I began to write.

But what's a writer for? The whole point is to put yourself into other lives, other heads-writers have always done that. If you screw up, so someone will tell you, that's all.

I saw my ex-husband in the street. I was sitting on the steps of the new library. Hello, my life, I said. We had once been married for twenty-seven years, so I felt justified. He said, What? What life? No life of mine.

My vocabulary is adequate for writing notes and keeping journals but absolutely useless for an active moral life.

All that is really necessary for survival of the fittest, it seems, is an interest in life, good, bad or peculiar.