Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. That’s why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.
Without the gods, how would I sing?? I asked. With your own voice,? he said.
If you don’t risk anything, you risk more.
How did I get to be a grown-up? At times, I find myself still sitting on the hillside, plotting revenge against the adult world.
So there were people who got up at noon, pared their toenails, and sat naked in hotel rooms without regarding each day as an apocalypse. Amazing! If someone had burst into my room and found me naked and paring my nails, I would have died of shock. Or would I? Maybe I was stronger than I thought.
Is love freedom or is it bondage?
That’s what a writer is – a conqueror of fears.
It is heresy in America to embrace any way of life except as half of a couple. Solitude is un-American.
You’re afraid of criticism,′ she says. ‘But criticism is a sign of life! You know who doesn’t get criticized? Nonentities! Only the dead escape criticism.
We have let Eros mean slavery, but Eros also has the power to set us free. We must demand the right to depict women’s lives as we know them, not as we might like them to be. We must stop applying political prescriptions to creativity.
If I wrote that women could be unkind, I was considered a traitor – as if it were not worse treachery to pretend that all women were kind.
Human beings are naturally hierarchical beasts. Democracy is not their native religion.
Why should a bad marriage have been so much more compelling than no marriage? Why had I clung to my misery so? Why did I believe it was all I had?
Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.