You all seem to think that you should marry someone when you feel this intense emotion, which you call love. And then you expect that the love will fade over time, as life gets harder. When what you should do is find yourself a nice enough fellow and let real love develop over years and births and deaths and so on.

The girls said she was too cynical about love, but how could you not be? On the surface, relations between men and women were all soft kisses and white gowns and hand-holding. But underneath they were a scary, complicated, ugly mess, just waiting to rise to the surface.

There were so many ways to be twenty-six years old.

I read as much poetry as time allows and circumstance dictates: No heartache can pass without a little Dorothy Parker, no thunderstorm without W. H. Auden, no sleepless night without W. B. Yeats.

I admire the linear and decisive way a certain kind of man thinks, to my curlicue boundless overthinking.

Reading poetry gives me a sense of calm, well-being, and love for humanity - the same stuff more flexible women get from yoga.

She had once said that she believed the women's liberation movement of the sixties and seventies was actually a ploy by men to get women to do more.