If watching television doesn't hasten death, it surely manages to make death very inviting; for television so shamelessly sentimentalizes and romanticizes death that it makes the living feel they have missed something - just by staying alive.

The unspoken factor is love. The reason I can work so hard at my writing is that it's not work for me.

What has been violated here is your freedom of choice, and every woman's freedom of choice, too.

I never know when I finish the novel I am writing which will be the next novel out of the station.

Is it a democratic society that condemns people to the accident of conception? What are we-monkeys? If you expect people to be responsible for their children, you have to give them the right to choose whether or not to have children. What are you people thinking of? You're not only crazy! You're ogres!

I don't want you to describe to me—not ever—what you were doing to that poor boy to make him sound like that; but if you ever do it again, please cover his mouth with your hand.

Being afraid you'll look like a coward is the worst reason for doing anything.