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

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

When nothing is sure, everything is possible.

Novels, since the birth of the genre, have been full of rejected, seduced, and abandoned maidens, whose proper fate is to die.

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

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

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