The joyous fulfillment of your sex : the sacred duties of beloved wife, and helpmeet, and mother. In opposition to the vulgar and mercantile hurly-burly of the great world, the idyllic pleasures of the domestic hearth-the which, I firmly believe, make of one small room an everywhere, indeed; and provide us with that small measure of bliss, which is, if we are greatly fortunate, and deserving, Our Lord's promise to us, of the Heaven to come.

I am inclined to think that as I grow older I will come to be infatuated with the art of revision, and there may come a time when I will dread giving up a novel at all.

Paradox: how do we know what we have failed to see because we have no language to express it, thus we cannot know that we have failed to see it.

I wrote a novel called "Blonde," which is about Norma Jean Baker, who becomes Marilyn Monroe, which I called a fictitious biography. That uses the material as if it were myth - that Marilyn Monroe is like this mythical figure in our culture.

Sometimes people surprise us. People we believe we know.

An actress wants to be seen. An actress wants to be loved. By multitudes of people, not just one lone man.

Impossible not to imagine the dead observing us. Our love for them a soft, shimmering gossamar that trails behind us.