It is a terrible thing, this kindess that human beings do not lose. Terrible, because when we are finally naked in the dark and cold, it is all we have. We who are so rich, so full of strength, we end up with that small change. We have nothing else to give.

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

We need writers who know the difference between the production of a commodity and the practice of an art.

The law of evolution is that the strongest survives.

Her work, I really think her work is finding what her real work is and doing it, her work, her own work, her being human, her being in the world.

I believe that maturity is not an outgrowing, but a growing up: that an adult is not a dead child, but a child who survived. I believe that all the best faculties of a mature human being exist in the child. . . that one of the most deeply human, and humane, of these faculties is the power of imagination.

Little mirrors were attached to the front of their cars, at which they glanced to see where they had been; then they stared ahead again. I had thought that only beetles had this delusion of Progress.