an autobiography held out the promise of hearing truths that only friends confess to one another but are knowledge you need to live.

biographies are a little like marriages: You only have room in your life for one or two.

The literature of women's lives is a tradition of escapees, women who have lived to tell the tale.

One form of loneliness is to have a memory and no one to share it with.

I believe we need literature, which, by allowing us to experience more fully, to imagine more fully, enables us to live more freely.

When you realize how hard it is to know the truth about yourself, you understand that even the most exhaustive and well-meaning autobiography, determined to tell the truth, represents, at best, a guess. There have been times in my life when I felt incredibly happy. Life was full. I seemed productive. Then I thought,"Am I really happy or am I merely masking a deep depression with frantic activity?" If I don't know such basic things about myself, who does?

an autobiography held out the promise of hearing truths that only friends confess to one another but are knowledge you need to live.