Personal experience is the lightning of the soul; it transforms the heart in ways that leave the brain behind.

When Tolstoy wrote that all happy families are alike, what he meant was that there are no happy families.

Obsession is so extreme and so hard to imagine with the rational mind that it has a science-fiction-like quality to it-it's almost as if the obsessed one has been taken over by a replica, a pod, a facsimile of the rational person.

The actual American childhood is less Norman Rockwell and Walt Disney than Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe.

If a woman is surrounded by lovers or if a woman has a lot of guys asking her out, that's considered wonderful. As a woman who's slept with a lot of men, I've always been complimented on my ability to attract men.

Addiction isnt about substance - you arent addicted to the substance, you are addicted to the alteration of mood that the substance brings.

A fierce literary woman with a penchant for married men, Margaret Fuller was ultimately torn between motherhood and her final career as a political reporter.