Language: the one tool that enables us to grasp hold of our lives and transcend our fate by understanding it.

One of the attributes of love . . . is to bring harmony and order out of chaos.

Being alone and liking it is, for a woman, an act of treachery, an infidelity far more threatening than adultery.

Madness is always fascinating, for it reveals the ungluing we all secretly fear: the mind taking off from the body, the possibility that the magnet that attaches us to a context in the world can lose its grip.

The mammary fixation is the most American of the sex fetishes.

There are very few heroines in literature who have defined their lives morally rather than romantically and likewise but a handful in film.

Movies both reflect and create social conditions, but their special charm is to offer fantasy clothes as virtual reality, a world where people consume without the tedium of labor. Characters float in a world where the bill never comes due ... and we wonder why we're a debtor nation!