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.

I believe that always, or almost always, in all childhoods and in all the lives that follow them, the mother represents madness. Our mothers always remain the strangest, craziest people we've ever met.

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

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

When you wept it was just over yourself and not because of the marvelous impossibility of reaching her through the difference that separates you.

To love one child and to love all children, whether living or dead -somewhere these two loves come together. To love a no-good but humble punk and to love an honest man who believes himself to be an honest man -somewhere these, too, come together.

I don't have general views about anything, except social injustice.