A man wants his virility regarded. A woman wants her femininity appreciated, however indirect and subtle the indications of regard and appreciation. [Here] one is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience.

We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains.

I can never get used to the fact, though I know it, that women are born cynics. Men have to learn cynicism. Infant girls could teach it to them.

Infinite are the arguments of mages.

Compare the torrent and the glacier. Both get where they are going.

When the genuine myth rises into consciousness, that is always its message. You must change your life.

When we're done with it, we may find—if it's a good novel—that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have been changed a little, as if by having meet a new face, crossed a street we've never crossed before.