Unlike Joseph her husband, Mary is neither upright nor pious, but she is not blame for this, the blame lies with the language she speaks if not with the men who invented it, because that language has no feminine form for the words upright and pious.

If I'm sincere today, what does it matter if I regret it tomorrow?

I write to try to understand, and because I have nothing better to do.

Blessed be the night, which conceals and protects things fair and foul with the same indifferent mantle.

A woman is essentially a vessel made to be filled.

I can't imagine myself outside any kind of social or political involvement.

I had no books at home. I started to frequent a public library in Lisbon. It was there, with no help except curiosity and the will to learn, that my taste for reading developed and was refined.