Literacy is so you can read the operating instructions.

I never knew anybody . . . who found life simple. I think a life or a time looks simple when you leave out the details.

Hate gets going, it goes round, it gets older and tighter and older and tighter, until it holds a person inside it like a fist holds a stick.

Virginity is now a mere preamble or waiting room to be got out of as soon as possible; it is without significance.

That I was not dueling with the king, but trying to communicate with him, was itself an incommunicable fact.

...If at moments the facts seem to alter with an altered voice, why then you can choose the fact you like best; yet none of them are false, and it is all one story.

The menopause is probably the least glamorous topic imaginable; and this is interesting, because it is one of the very few topics to which cling some shreds and remnants of taboo. A serious mention of menopause is usually met with uneasy silence; a sneering reference to it is usually met with relieved sniggers. Both the silence and the sniggering are pretty sure indications of taboo.