“I've arrived at this outermost edge of my life by my own actions. Where I am is thoroughly unacceptable. Therefore I must stop doing what I have been doing.”

“Long ago I understood that it wasn't merely my being a woman that was preventing my being welcomed into the world of what I long thought of as my peers. It was that I had succeeded in an undertakin...”

“Work is a world apart from jobs. Work is the way you occupy your mind and hand and eye and whole body when they're informed by your imagination.”

“But there is saying, and there is doing, and almost always people do something better than they can talk about it, as though the minded body defeats every attempt to select out only the mind part a...”

“No man needs sympathy because he has to work, because he has a burden to carry. Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.”

“All my life I've been surrounded by people who are smarter than I am, but I found I could always keep up by working hard.”

“Loveless work, boring work, work valued only because others haven't got even that much, however loveless and boring--this is one of the harshest human miseries.”

“I'm fiercely independent, but I'm also terrified of being alone.”

“As I get older I'm more and more comfortable being alone.”

“What a lovely surprise to finally discover how unlonely being alone can be.”