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

Lord knows what incommunicable small terrors infants go through, unknown to all. We disregard them, we say they forget, because they have not the words to make us remember. ... By the time they learn to speak they have forgotten the details of their complaints, and so we never know. They forget so quickly, we say, because we cannot contemplate the fact that they never forget.

Sometimes it seems the only accomplishment my education ever bestowed on me was the ability to think in quotations.

Poverty, therefore, was comparative. One measured it by a sliding scale. One was always poor, in terms of those who were richer.

I've always thought that very few people grow old as admirably as academics. At least books never let them down.

When nothing is sure, everything is possible.

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.