When nothing is sure, everything is possible.

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

How extraordinary people are, that they get themselves into such situations where they go on doing what they dislike doing, and have no need or obligation to do, simply because it seems to be expected.

If I knew what the meanings of my books were, I wouldn't have bothered to write them.

My anti-Americanism has become almost uncontrollable. It has possessed me, like a disease. It rises up in my throat like acid reflux, that fashionable American sickness. I now loathe the United States and what it has done to Iraq and the rest of the helpless world.

Nothing succeeds, they say, like success. And certainly nothing fails like failure.

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