poetry is where the language is renewed.

Maybe sadness was a kind of hunger, she thought. Maybe the two went together.

When a man is attacked in print, it's usually for saying what he says; when a woman is attacked in print, it's often for being who she is.

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.

It had helped to keep her sane, that writing. Then, when time had begun again and real people had entered it, she'd abandoned it here. Now it's a whisper from the past. Is that what writing amounts to? The voice your ghost would have, if it had a voice?

Within one's own family, money is not the measure of things, unless the person is an absolute Scrooge. Only the most extreme kind of monster would put a price on everything.

They will not let you have peace, they don't want you to have anything they don't have themselves.