Feminism hasn't failed, it's just never been tried.

So many years of preparation, for what was called adult life: was it for this?

I believe this was [Margaret Thatcher] estimate of the voter: "These people are so stupid that they will vote for me because they think I know how to run the household."

I was the subject of an experiment in love. I lived my life under her gaze, undergoing certain trials for her so that she would not have to undergo them for herself. But, how are our certainties forged, except by the sweat and tears of other people? If your parents don't teach you how to live; you learn it from books; and clever people watch you learn from your mistakes.

Suppose within each book there is another book, and within every letter on every page another volume constantly unfolding; but these volumes take no space on the desk. Suppose knowledge could be reduced to a quintessence, held within a picture, a sign, held within a place which is no place. Suppose the human skull were to become capacious, spaces opening inside it, humming chambers like beehives.

A novel should be a book of questions, not a book of answers.

It is almost a joke, but a joke that nobody tells.