To other women the choice of clothes was a form of ingenious exhibition, a shameless seduction. To me, dresses were like a breastplate that I put on to set off to war against this life.

Politicians are better liars than writers.

I would like to be a philosopher in ancient Athens and a poet in ancient China.

I have written too much about lives - I feel I have lived for too long.

I talk to trees and animals. We have interesting conversations about food, weather, and love. They sometimes can predict the future.

I notice the silvery hair at his temples with a tinge of sadness. Why do parents grow old? Life is a castle of lies slowly dismantled by the passage of time. I regret not spending more time looking at the people I love.

Endless moons, an opaque universe, thunder, tornadoes, the quaking earth. Rare moments of peace; forehead up against my knees, arms around my head, I though, I listened, I longed not to exist. but life was there, a transparent pearl, a star revolving slowly on its own axis.