In Ohio seasons are theatrical. Each one enters like a prima donna, convinced its performance is the reason the world has people in it.

A dead hydrangea is as intricate and lovely as one in bloom. Bleak sky is as seductive as sunshine, miniature orange trees without blossom or fruit are not defective; they are that.

All of us--all who knew her--felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her. We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness. Her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health, her awkwardness made us think we had a sense of humor. Her inarticulateness made us believe we were eloquent. Her poverty kept us generous. Even her waking dreams we used--to silence our own nightmares.

Love is never any better than the lover.

The best art is political and you ought to be able to make it unquestionably political and irrevocably beautiful at the same time.

Like friendship, hatred needed more than physical intimacy; it wanted creativity and hard work to sustain itself

I write the way women have babies. You don't know it's going to be like that. If you did, there's no way you would go through with it.