The feminist movement has been important to me because it's made me feel less odd and also because it has made me understand some of the pressures on women which I was lucky enough to have escaped, perhaps because of my eccentricity or the oddness of my upbringing.

The young-old polarization and the male-female polarization are perhaps the two leading stereotypes that imprison people.

Perversity is the muse of modern literature.

Tragedy is a vision of nihilism, a heroic or ennobling vision of nihilism.

I like to feel dumb. That’s how I know there’s more in the world than me.

That's what a community is: taking for granted certain assumptions, not having to start from zero every time. This is no longer true.

People tend to become cynical about even the most appalling crisis if it seems to be dragging on, failing to come to term.