“I'm beginning to think that maybe it's not just how much you love someone. Maybe what matters is who you are when you're with them.”

“It is very difficult to live among people you love and hold back from offering them advice.”

“I've never quite believed that one chance is all I get”

“My cousin Roger once told me, on the eve of his third wedding, that he felt marriage was addictive. Then he corrected himself. I mean early marriage, he said. The very start of a marriage. It's lik...”

“Ah, God, it's barbaric, however you look at it,' he told Ruth.'What, cremation?' she asked.'Death.”

“The one ironclad rule is that I have to try. I have to walk into my writing room and pick up my pen every weekday morning.”

“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.”

“We must accept the idea that having a male child has a unique social and psychological meaning for a woman. Even women who led the movement to break out the passivity and sublimation of the female ...”

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”