Reading groups, readings, breakdowns of book sales all tell the same story: when women stop reading, the novel will be dead.

one could drown in irrelevance.

She would simply wait on the bridge, calm and obstinate, until events, real events, not her own fantasies, roe to her challenge, and dispelled her insignificance.

She bent her finger and then straightened it. The mystery was in the instant before it moved, the dividing moment between not moving and moving, when her intention took effect. It was like a wave breaking. If she could only find herself at the crest, she thought, she might find the secret of herself, that part of her that was really in charge. She brought her forefinger closer to her face and stared at it, urging it to move. It remained still because she was pretending... . And when she did crook it finally, the action seemed to start in the finger itself, not in some part of her mind.

I like to think that it isn't weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness, a stand against oblivion and despair.

You can spin stories out of the ways people understand and misunderstand each other.

What was it with men, that they found elementary logic so difficult?