“I had to discover very quickly that class origins cannot be erased, regardless of whether we climb up or down the sociocultural ladder.”

He was going through one of those moments that you read about in books, when a character reacts in an unexpectedly extreme way to the normal discontents of living.

Those who write need that “willing suspension of disbelief “, as Coleridge called it.

I have always paid careful attention to social and economic conflicts, to the dialectic – if we can call it that – between high and low. Maybe it’s because I was not born or brought up in affluence.

The fictional treatment of biographical material – a treatment that for me is essential – is full of traps.

Existence is this, I thought, a start of joy, a stab of pain, an intense pleasure, veins that pulse under the skin, there is no other truth to tell.

Even as I felt myself solidly contained by the expectant looks of my children. It was the fault of the torture that my husband had inflicted. But enough, I had to tear the pain from memory, I had to sandpaper away the scratches that were damaging my brain.

I believe that books, once they are written, have no need of their authors.

In order not to cut out a large part of one’s private life, the creative work should not swallow up every other form of self-expression. But that is the most complicated thing.

The essential, however, was to know how to play, and she and I, only she and I, knew how to do it.

I think our sexuality is all yet to be recounted and that the rich male literary tradition constitutes a huge obstacle.

Certainly something had happened to me during the night. Or after months of tension I had arrived at the edge of some precipice and now I was falling, as in a dream slowly, even as I continued to hold the thermometer in my hand, een as I stood with the soles of my slippers on the floor.

I don’t have any special passion for politics, it being a never-ending merry-go-round of bosses big and small, all generally mediocre. I actually find it boring.

My work stops at publication. If the books don’t contain in themselves their reasons for being – questions and answers – it means I was wrong to have them published.

Competition between women is good only if it does not prevail; that is to say if it coexists with affinity, affection, with a real sense of being mutually indispensable, with sudden peaks of solidarity in spite of envy, jealousy and the whole inevitable cohort of bad feelings.

Is it possible that even happy moments of pleasure never stand up to a rigorous examination? Possible.

Anonymity lets me concentrate exclusively on writing.

The downward spiral of Dumbness in America is about to hit a new low.

If your guard is up, let it down. If you’ve constructed a defensive wall to protect yourself and keep all the bad guys out, don’t forget who that wall also prevents from getting in – the good guys.

For fast-acting relief try slowing down.

Flowers fall down to blossom new, so do you!

If you’re feeling down and times are blue, Remember this and know its true.  Tomorrow you can always start anew. A new day to seize, positivity your virtue.

Isn’t this loneliness a strange poetry? you want everyone to read, but you are never willing to write it down.

The world has slowed down. Its okay if you do too.

She is an all encompassing enigma of beauty and madness don’t attempt to tie her down.