Betrayal is the deepest wound. Betrayal is what remains of love, when love has gone.

That's how a thing starts out real then ends up just an idea.

I've never given up. I've always kept going. I don't feel that I could afford to give up. That would be the beginning of the end.

In a sense, I may not consciously know what I'm doing. I feel that I'm telling a story. I'm a kind of medium by which something is transmitted.

Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions.

I did not consider that I would lead a literary life. I'd thought initially, as a young girl, that I would be a teacher, since I so admired many of my teachers. And though I loved writing, I did not ever think of myself as a writer.

If Shakespeare's great plays are variants of stories, even novels, you can see how each character is telling his story from his perspective; each is vying with the others for dominance, but in the end, in tragedy, most of these voices will die, to be replaced by the yet more vigorous voice of a younger generation.