Myths hook and bind the mind because at the same time they set the mind free: they explain the universe while allowing the universe to go on being unexplained; and we seem to need this even now, in our twentieth-century grandeur.

I feel in colour, strong tones that I hue down for the comfort of the pastelly inclined. Beige and magnolia and a hint of pink are what the well-decorated heart is wearing; who wants my blood red and vein-blue?

You don't get over it because 'it' is the person you loved.

It is just as likely that as I invent what I want to say, you will invent what you want to hear.

...to live differently, to love differently, to think differently, or to try to. Is the danger of beauty so great that it is better to live without it (the standard model)? Or to fall into her arms fire to fire? There is no discovery without risk and what you risk reveals what you value. Inside the horror of Nagasaki and Hiroshima lies the beauty of Einstein's E=MC squared

I'm always nervous about going home, just as I am nervous about rereading books that have meant a lot to me.

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.