If art is not to be life-enhancing, what is it to be? Half the world is feminine - why is there resentment at a female-oriented art? Nobody asks The Tale of Genji to be masculine! Women certainly learn a lot from books oriented toward a masculine world. Why is not the reverse also true? Or are men really so afraid of women's creativity?

Gardening is the instrument of grace.

[In old age] there is a childlike innocence, often, that has nothing to do with the childishness of senility. The moments become precious . . .

in the very long run any success devours - and perhaps also corrupts.

My own feeling is that the only possible reason for engaging in the hard labor of writing a novel, is that one is bothered by something one needs to understand, and can come to understand only through the characters in the imagined situation.

For after all we make our faces as we go along.

What is there to do when people die - people so dear and rare - but bring them back by remembering?