I need words and print... I need print like an addict. I could live without it, perhaps. But I hope I never have to try.

There would be more genuine rejoicing at the discovery of a complete new novel by Jane Austen than any other literary discovery, short of a new major play by Shakespeare.

World War II put feminism on hold for a long time; the men went away to fight, a lot of women in those years got jobs both in teaching and in factories - at all social levels - which they enjoyed very much. A lot of them were quite happy during the war.

Family life itself, that safest, most traditional, most approved of female choices, is not a sanctuary: It is, perpetually, a dangerous place.

I'd rather be at the end of a dying tradition, which I admire, than at the beginning of a tradition which I deplore.

You have to be careful what you imagine, because the act of imagining is the act of encouraging yourself to be a certain kind of person.

Perhaps the rare and simple pleasure of being seen for what one is compensates for the misery of being it.