"We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives." |
(Love) is easily the most empty cliché, the most useless word, and at the same time the most powerful human emotion—because hatred is involved in it, too. |
All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. |
And like any artist with no art form, she became dangerous. |
As a writer reading, I came to realize the obvious: the subject of the dream is the dreamer |
As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think. |
Beloved, you are my sister, you are my daughter, you are my face; you are me |
Bit by bit . . . she had claimed herself. Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another. |
Bryn Mawr had done what a four-year dose of liberal education was designed to do: unfit her for eighty per cent of useful work of the world. |
Her mind traveled crooked streets and aimless goat paths, arriving sometimes at profundity, other times at the revelations of a three-year-old. |
How soon country people forget. When they fall in love with a city it is forever, and it is like forever. As though there never was a time when they didn't love it. The minute they arrive at the train station or get off the ferry and glimpse the wide streets and the wasteful lamps lighting them, they know they are born for it. There, in a city, they are not so much new as themselves: their stronger, riskier selves. |
I have my own list of objections that I can peruse at my leisure, not least of which is an almost comic obtuseness regarding women, ... generous; impractical; often wrong; always engaged; mindful of, and often amused by, his own power. |
I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it. |
If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, you must be the one to write it. |
If there's a book you really want to read but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it |