I consider it almost antifeminist to say that there is a feminine nature which expresses itself differently, that a woman speaks her body more than a man, because after all, men also speak their bodies when they write. Everything is implicated in the work of a writer.

There are topics which are common to men and women. I think that if a woman speaks of oppression, of misery, she will speak of it in exactly the same way as a man. But if she speaks of her own personal problems as a woman, she will obviously speak in another way.

Sometimes speech is no more than a device for saying nothing - and a neater one than silence.

It is not mere chance that makes families speak of a child who is 'extraordinary for his age' and also of an old man who is 'extraordinary for his age'; the extraordinariness lies in their behaving like human beings when they are either not yet or no longer men.

...counselling man to treat her as a slave while persuading her that she is a queen.

I never thought of myself as being in the avant-garde. I said what I had to say, as I was able to say it.

I don't want to be just another blade of grass.