Intelligence is not necessarily a good thing, something to value or cultivate. It's more like a fifth wheel - necessary or desirable when things break down. When things go well, it's better to be stupid ... Stupidity is as much a value as intelligence.

I have been told that I am a "natural" feminist, someone who was born a feminist. In fact I was quite blind to what the problem was: I couldn't understand why anyone would hesitate to do what they wanted to do just because they were told that women didn't do such things.

A good book is an education of the heart. It enlarges your sense of human possibility what human nature is of what happens in the world. It's a creator of inwardness.

My emotional life: dialectic between craving for privacy and need to submerge myself in a passionate relationship to another.

Is it the obligation of great art to be continually interesting? I think not.

My skull is crammed with quotations.

There is a terrible, mean American resentment toward a writer who tries to do many things.