Why can't people be both flexible and efficient?

I used to be a reasonably careless and adventurous person before I had children; now I am morbidly obsessed by seat-belts and constantly afraid that low-flying aircraft will drop on my children's school.

What really annoys me are the ones who write to say, I am doing your book for my final examinations and could you please tell me what the meaning of it is. I find it just so staggering--that you're supposed to explain the meaning of your book to some total stranger! If I knew what the meanings of my books were, I wouldn't have bothered to write them.

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.

Some of what we read in classical literature is not relative to our condition, but then many women novelists and poets have turned it upside down and told the stories from the other point of view.

On one thing professionals and amateurs agree: mothers can't win.