We cannot love something solely because it has been ignored. It must also be worthy of our attention.
The lady was old, the lady was ill. It didn’t matter what the lady believed.
And so it happened again, the daily miracle whereby interiority opens out and brings to bloom the million-petalled flower of being here, in the world, with other people. Neither as hard as she had thought it might be nor as easy as it appeared.
I don’t ask myself what did I live for, said Carlene strongly. That is a man’s question. I ask whom did I live for.
Any woman who counts on her face is a fool.
It’s difficult to tell the truth about how a book begins. The truth, as far as it can be presented to other people, is either wholly banal or too intimate.
They had nothing to say to each other. A five-year age gap between siblings is like a garden that needs constant attention. Even three months apart allows the weeds to grow up between you.
Sometimes, one wants to have the illusion that one is making ones own life, out of ones own resources.
A writer’s duty is to register what it is like for him or her to be in the world.
It was in the air, or so it seemed to Kiki, this hatred of women and their bodies- it seeped in with every draught in the house; people brought it home on their shoes, they breathed it in off their newspapers. There was no way to control it.
She did what girls generally do when they don’t feel the part: she dressed it instead.
Don’t live in a way that makes you feel dead.
You must live life with the full knowledge that your actions will remain. We are creatures of consequence.
In the end, your past is not my past and your truth is not my truth and your solution – is not my solution.
Under every friendship there is a difficult sentence that must be said, in order that the friendship can be survived.
This is what a woman is: unadorned, after children and work and age, and experience-these are the marks of living.
He had her in his heart, but not always in his mind.
When the male organ of a man stands erect, two thirds of his intelect go away. And one third of his religion.
Full stories are as rare as honesty.
It’s such a confidence trick, writing a novel. The main person you have to trick into confidence is yourself. This is hard to do alone.