If what we think now is different from what we thought then, we can take it for granted that what we think in a year will be different again.
At no time, anywhere, was the population of a country told the truth: facts about events trickled into general consciousness much later, if ever.
Perhaps it is a fault of the species who thrive in peace, mutual help, aspirations for more of the same – to forget that outside these borders dwell very different types of mind, feeding on different fuel.
The old watch the young with anguish, pain, fear. Above all what each has learned is what things cost, what has to be paid.
One novel in five hundred or a thousand has the quality a novel should have to make it a novel – the quality of philosophy.
What is terrible is that after every one of the phases of my life is finished, I am left with no more than some banal commonplace that everyone knows.
Sometimes I think what I write is funny in its quiet way.
And then, not expecting it, you become middle-aged and anonymous. No one notices you. You achieve a wonderful freedom. It is a positive thing. You can move about, unnoticed and invisible.
I treasure solitude. One doesn’t have to have human contact.
I am so happy to be communicating with people on this newest of new wavelengths which to some older people must seem like a kind of magic.
The older I get the more secrets I have, never to be revealed and this, I know, is a common condition of people my age. and why all this emphasis on kissing and telling? Kisses are the least of it.
I’m always astounded at the way we automatically look at what divides and separates us. We never look at what people have in common.
I don’t think San Francisco needs defending. I never meet anyone who doesn’t love the place, Americans or others.
What of October, that ambiguous month, the month of tension, the unendurable month?
For women like me, integrity isn’t chastity, it isn’t fidelity, it isn’t any of the old words. Integrity is the orgasm. That is something I haven’t any control over.
This is a catastrophic universe, always; and subject to hidden reversals, upheavals, changes, cataclysms, with joy never anything but the song of substance under pressure forced into new forms and shapes.
Basic facts tend always to be those most easily overlooked.
The cleverest trick of the Devil is that nobody believes in him. It. Her. Well, we have been very stupid.
People who love literature have at least part of their minds immune from indoctrination. If you read, you can learn to think for yourself.
Cats mean kittens, plentiful and frequent.