My private measure of success is daily. If this were to be the last day of my life would I be content with it? To live in a harmonious balance of commitments and pleasures is what I strive for.

The message of women's liberation is that women can love each other and ourselves against our degrading education.

Human beings tolerate what they understand they have to tolerate.

The terrifying message of gay liberation is that men are capable of loving their brothers. It should be sweet news to every womanin the world, for, if the capacity of men to love whom they have been taught to treat as competitors and enemies can transcend their education, the world can begin to heal.

Morality is a test of our conformity rather than our integrity.

I had always said to myself that forty was the cut off point of my apprenticeship which may for some people sound like a very long one, but the novel as art is a middle-aged art.

Conventions, like clichés, have a way of surviving their own usefulness.