To give space when what one most yearns for is closeness, that is both the great test and great tragedy of love.

--There you are. The sight of the changing world is miraculous and heartbreaking, both at the same time. --But so it is for me too. The heartbreaking side of growing old is not in the things around one but in oneself.

When women act like women, they are accused of being inferior. When women act like human beings, they are accused of behaving like men.

I think it's wrong to write in a totally esoteric language when you want to talk about things which interest a multitude of women.

Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day.

Live with no time-out.

Insects were scurrying about in the shade cast by the grass, and the lawn was a huge monotonous forest of thousands of little green blades, all equal, all alike, hiding the world from each other. Anguished, she thought, "I don't want to be just another blade of grass."