Also she went in for culture, which gave her a certain moral authority. It wouldn't now; but people believed, then, that culture could make you better - a better person. They believed it could uplift...
A writer's age at the time of a work's composition is never irrelevant.
A voice is a human gift; it should be cherished and used, to utter fully human speech as possible. Powerlessness and silence go together.
A man is just a woman's strategy for making other women. Not that your father wasn't a nice guy and all, but... there's something missing in them, even the nice ones. It's like they're permanently abs...
The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is a scientific one: dipping a thread into a supersaturated solution to induce crystal formation. I do...
I'm a strict, strict agnostic. It's very different from a casual, 'I don't know.' It's that you cannot present as knowledge something that is not knowledge. You can present it as faith, you can presen...
The Eskimo has fifty-two names for snow because it is important to them there ought to be as many for love.
Sons branch out but one woman leads to another.
I'm not going to have a husband anyway," said Laura. "I'm going to live by myself in the garage.
Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy -...
Pink is supposed to weaken your enemies, make them go soft on you, which must be why it's used for baby girls. It's a wonder the military hasn't got on to this.
I read for pleasure and that is the moment I learn the most.
I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only one 'race' - the human race - and that we are all members of it.
Speech to him was a task, a battle, words mustered behind his beard and issued one at a time, heavy and square like tanks.
Expectation isn't the same as desire
You shouldn't do that, said Laura. You could set yourself on fire.
You all right? he said again.I didn't love him, I was far away from him, it was as though I was seeing him through a smeared window or glossy paper; he didn't belong here. But he existed, he deserved...
Why is it always such a surprise? thinks Toby. The moon. Even though we know it's coming. Every time we see it, it makes us pause, and hush.
We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom.We lived in the gaps between the stories.
We understand more than we know.