To look at her, you might not guess that inside she is laughing and crying, at her own stupidities and luckiness, and at the strange enigmatic ways of the world which she will spend lifetime trying to learn and understand.

When I was nineteen, pureness was the great issue. Instead of the world being divided up into Catholics and Protestants or Republicans and Democrats or white men and black men or even men and women, I saw the world divided into people who had slept with somebody and people who hadn’t, and this seemed the only really significant difference between one person and another.

Let me sit in a flowerpot, The spiders won't notice. My heart is a stopped geranium.

The silence between us was so profound I thought part of it must be my fault.

I cut you out because I couldn't stand being a passing fancy.

I find that in a novel I can get more of life, perhaps not such intense life, but certainly more of life than in poetry.

The truth comes to me. The truth loves me.