Literature is a place for generosity and affection and hunger for equals - not a prizefight ring. We are increased, confirmed in our medium, roused to do our best, by every good writer, every fine achievement. Would we want one good writer or fine book less? The sense of writers being pitted against each other is bred primarily by the workings of the commercial marketplace, and by critics lauding one writer at the expense of another while ignoring the existence of nearly all.

The fact that human beings do not put up forever with misery, humiliation, degradation, actual physical deprivation but act is a fact which every human being should know about. We are a species that makes changes.

Not to have an audience is a kind of death.

Not everybody feels religion the same way. Some it's in their mouth, but some it's like a hope in their blood, their bones.

It is distraction, not meditation, that becomes habitual; interruption, not continuity; spasmodic, not constant toil.

Every woman who writes is a survivor.

She would not exchange her solitude for anything. Never again to be forced to move to the rhythms of others.