“Our empathy for others as an excuse to underpay us.”

I vowed to give up sex, bacon, and air travel if I ever made it back to terra firma in one piece.

Allow me to put the record straight. I am forty-six and have been for some years past.

Every time I catch myself saying, “Oh no, you shouldn’t try that,” I think, “Yes, I should.”

They keep saying the right person will come along. I think mine got hit by a truck.

I myself hate that old Hemingwayesque paradigm of the writer as prizefighter and I have tried hard to create an alternate one for myself.

Conflict is the soul of literature.

You can’t be creative and still be a good girl.

Memory is the most transient of all possessions. And when it goes, it leaves as few traces as stars that have disappeared.

The greatest feminists have also been the greatest lovers. I’m thinking not only of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley, but of Anais Nin, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and of course Sappho.

It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.

I don’t know what the definition of pornography is and nobody else does either. Pornography is somebody else’s erotica that you don’t like.

Don’t ye know that ev’ry Soul on Earth feels itself to be an Orphan?

Jealousy is all the fun you think they had.

Though my friends envied me because I always seemed so cheerful and confident, I was secretly terrified of practically everything.

And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.

I really love sharing my gift with others.

So, to praise others for their virtues – Can but encourage one’s own efforts

Imagine a magician Who creates a creature Who creates other creatures. Acts I perform are creatures Who create others.

So what I would say to other people is to just embrace who you are because you will become instantly happier.

Before pride waves a white flag, it waves all other colors.

The issue has two dimensions. One is the legal dimension and the other one is the issue at the realpolitik. [In the] legal realm.

We all become afraid. We all look at others and think these other people are more fortunate than us.

I detest only the violence and trauma that any self-centered conduct can cause to others.