“Lucy could see that love unconfined, love outside convention, might well make a woman an unfit mother; you were one kind of woman or another: you were good or you were bad, as the world saw it, and...”

“Take me! Well, not quite take me, love me now, take me eventually”

“For who ever lived totally as they wanted to; who ever, if they have time to think about it, dies wholly satisfied? And those who remain know it.”

“guilt to motherhood is like grapes to wine”

“Books fashion nets to sustain and support the reader as he falls helplessly through the chaos of his own existence.”

“Worry less about what other people think about you, and more about what you think about them.”

“It seems to me that since I've had children, I've grown richer and deeper. They may have slowed down my writing for a while, but when I did write, I had more of a self to speak from.”

“It didn't matter that there was a war on our doorstep. She had things to do, places to be.”

“Stranger inside me, when you are born, I will give youa closed book and ask you never to read it, never rest, never forgive a man who wants to save you.”