You may not be able to alter reality, but you can alter your attitude towards it, and this, paradoxically, alters reality. Try it and see.

You can examine the whole 19th century from the point of view of who would have maxed out their credit cards. Emma Bovary would have maxed hers out. No question. Mr. Scrooge would not have. He would have snipped his up.

I am too old to have ever been very worried about what "genre" any given book of mine might be. I read everything. I am easily amused.

Messy love is better than none, I guess. I am no authority on sane living.

But remember that forgiveness too is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withhold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest. Maybe none of this is about control. Maybe it isn't really about who can own whom, who can do what to whom and get away with it, even as far as death. Maybe it isn't about who can sit and who has to kneel or stand or lie down, legs spread open. Maybe it's about who can do what to whom and be forgiven for it. Never tell me it amounts to the same thing.

You shouldn't do that," said Laura. "You could set yourself on fire.

Oppression involves a failure of the imagination: the failure to imagine the full humanity of other human beings.