I’m sorry. I can love you. I can grieve for you, or with you. I can share your pain. But I cannot judge you.
All true wealth is biological.
When I go down into the ground at last, as God is my judge, I pray my best-beloved may have better to say of me than, “He didn’t hit me.”
Whether you function as welders or inspectors, the laws of physics are implacable lie-detectors. You may fool men. You will never fool the metal.
If you ever have to make a choice between learning and inspiration, choose learning. It works most of the time.
Like integrity, love of life was not a subject to be studied, it was a contagion to be caught. And you had to catch it from someone who had it.
Exile, for no other motive than ease, would be the last defeat, with no seed of future victory in it.
I’ve described my usual writing process as scrambling from peak to peak on inspiration through foggy valleys of despised logic. Inspiration is better when you can get it.
No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. Not when the enemy is me.
It is always easier to get forgiveness than permission.
One of the best things about writing is how it redeems, not to mention recycles, all of one’s prior experiences, including or perhaps especially the failures.
I am increasingly convinced that technological culture is the entire root of women’s liberation.
I’ve always tried to write the kind of book I most loved to read: character-centered adventure.
From fried witchetty grubs to gold-plated turnips, when you’re a writer you never know what’s going to appear on your plate next. It keeps a woman alert, it does.
If you desire a man to tell you comfortable lies about your prowess, and so fetter any hope of true excellence, I’m sure you may find one anywhere. Not all prisons are made of iron bars. Some are made of feather beds.
Only the saints would joke so about the gods, because it was either joke or scream, and they alone knew it was all the same to the gods.
Second sight is redundant to reason anyway.
Surely only correct understanding could lead to correct action.
A stunning first impression was not the same thing as love at first sight. But surely it was an invitation to consider the matter.
Some men just aren’t cut out for paternity. Better they should realize it before and not after they become responsible for a son.