The West is color. Its colors are animal rather than vegetable, the colors of earth and sunlight and ripeness.

In their sympathies, children feel nearer animals than adults

If you train people properly, they won't be able to tell a drill from the real thing. If anything, the real thing will be easier.

In my time and neighborhood (and in my soul) there was only one standard by which a woman measured success: did some man want her?

It is not easy to be solitary unless you are also born ruthless. Every solitary repudiates someone.

Talent is helpful in writing, but guts are absolutely necessary.

I am always jumping into the sausage grinder and deciding, even before I’m half ground, that I don’t want to be a sausage after all.