“There is more difference within the sexes than between them.”

“As regards plots I find real life no help at all. Real life seems to have no plots. And as I think a plot desirable and almost necessary, I have this extra grudge against real life. But I think the...”

“We can build upon foundations anywhere if they are well and truly laid.”

“Real charity and a real ability never to condemn-the one real virtue-is so often the result of a waking experience that gives a glimpse of what lies beneath things.”

“It is no good to think that other people are out to serve our interests.”

“Real life seems to have no plots.”

“There are many things that make a man irritable when he arrives home from work in the evening and a sensible wife will usually notice the storm-signals and will leave him alone until he simmers down.”

“Oblivion, she thought. That was the world she lived in. It was what they should name some countries, towns, and places.”

“A lot of men wouldn't like being called a romantic. It's not macho enough.'Quite often men are fools.”

“No black woman writer in this culture can write "too much". Indeed, no woman writer can write "too much"...No woman has ever written enough.”

“When you reduce a woman to writing, she makes you think of a thousand other women”

“I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”