He wanted to pay her; he thought women ought to be paid for keeping men from dying or going out of their minds.

I am dead. I have no desire for you. My body no longer wants the one who doesn’t love.

The words emerge from her body without her realizing it, as if she were being visited by the memory of a language long forsaken.

Drinking isn't necessarily the same as wanting to die. But you can't drink without thinking you're killing yourself.

Alcohol doesn't console, it doesn't fill up anyone's psychological gaps, all it replaces is the lack of God.

Get rid of things or you'll spend your whole life tidying up.

A woman's work, from the time she gets up to the time she goes to bed, is as hard as a day at war, worse than a man's working day. ... To men, women's work was like the rain-bringing clouds, or the rain itself. The task involved was carried out every day as regularly as sleep. So men were happy - men in the Middle Ages, men at the time of the Revolution, and men in 1986: everything in the garden was lovely.