The stories we sit up late to hear are love stories. It seems that we cannot know enough about this riddle of our lives. We go back and back to the same scenes, the same words, trying to scrape out the meaning. Nothing could be more familiar than love. Nothing else eludes us so completely.

Not much touches us, but we long to be touched. We lie awake at night willing the darkness to part and show us a vision.

To kiss well one must kiss solely. No groping hands or stammering hearts. The lips and the lips alone are the pleasure. Passion is sweeter split strand by strand. Divided and re-divided like mercury then gathered up only at the last moment.

I think of myself in a continuum as a woman. Two hundred years ago, it would have been very difficult for me to write at all.

I think now that being free is not being powerful or rich or well regarded or without obligation but being able to love. To love someone else enough to forget about yourself even for one moment is to be free.

Everything in writing begins with language. Language begins with listening.

I used to think marriage was a plate-glass window just begging for a brick.