I am still amazed at the amount of Christian charity [Wellesley] stuck us all with, a kind of glazed politeness in the face of boredom and stupidity. Tolerance, in the worst sense of the word. How marvelous it would have been to go to a women's college that encouraged impoliteness, that rewarded aggression, that encouraged argument.

I am continually fascinated at the difficulty intelligent people have in distinguishing what is controversial from what is merely offensive.

There is something called the rapture of the deep, and it refers to what happens when a deep-sea diver spends too much time at the bottom of the ocean and can't tell which way is up. When he surfaces, he's liable to have a condition called the bends, where the body can't adapt to the oxygen levels in the atmosphere. All of this happens to me when I surface from a great book.

I don't know why so much nonsense about age is written - although I can certainly understand that no one really wants to read anything that says aging sucks.

I have no desire to be dominated. Honestly I don't. And yet I find myself becoming angry when I'm not.

If pregnancy were a book they would cut the last two chapters.

When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.