“As with most liberal sexual ideas, what makes the world a better place for men invariably makes it a duller and more dangerous place for women.”

“It may be a cliche, but it's true - the build-up to Christmas is so much more pleasurable than the actual day itself.”

“One Christmas build-up tradition, however, has totally bypassed me - that of going up to town and 'doing a show.'”

“Fact is, famous people say fame stinks because they love it so - like a secret restaurant or holiday island they don't want the hoi polloi to get their grubby paws on.”

“As a precocious teen I dreamed of being Graham Greene. Well, as it turned out, I never wrote a great novel, sadly, and I never converted to Catholicism, happily, but I did do one thing he did. That...”

“I don't really care what people tell children - when you believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, one more fib won't hurt. But I am infuriated by the growing notion, posited in...”

“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.”

“Smart Technology is making us stupid.”

“Smart is what you learn from others. Wise is what you learn from yourself.”

“You looked a little bit smarter when your stupidity lessened a lot.”

“They had killed themselves over our dying forests, over manatees maimed by propellers as they surfaced to drink from garden hoses; they had killed themselves at the sight of used tires stacked high...”

“The world seemed to shimmer a little at the edges.”

“If we cannot accept the importance of the world, which considers itself important, if in the midst of that world our laughter finds no echo, we have but one choice: to take the world as a whole and...”