Love is the terrible secret people are suspected of unless they're married, then one always suspects they don't.

Morality, like language, is an invented structure for conserving and communicating order. And morality is learned, like language, by mimicking and remembering.

Coming out, all the way out, is offered more and more as the political solution to our oppression.

I was very frightened when I turned forty. I suddenly thought I ought to wake up and be speaking with the voice of God.

The real power of books is their deep companionability. We learn from them as we learn from the deep companionability of love to know our own hearts and minds better.

Knowledge is a collective enterprise. Without it understanding is impossible. Ignorance is too often a murderous vulnerability.

As a writer, I must be free to say what is in all the diversity I can command. I regret the distorting prejudices that surround me, whether they affect homosexuals or men or the physically handicapped and I can't alone defeat them. They will not defeat me, either as a lesbian or a writer.