"There's nothing good about being ordinary. People don't respect you for it. People run after people who are different, who have confidence in their own taste, who don't run with the herd. There is nothing gained by giving in to the pressures of group vulgarity."

"Nothing quite has reality for me till I write it all down--revising and embellishing as I go. I'm always waiting for things to be over so I can get home and commit them to paper."

"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."

"Filled her memory bank with shiny coins."

"You take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame."

"She died of internal weeping."

"You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy."

"Husband and wife have no time left to spend together. Marriage took away our one reason for getting married."

"And what is laughter anyway? Changing the angle of vision."

"Though my friends envied me because I always seemed so cheerful and confident, I was secretly terrified of practically everything."

"Most people in this country are looking for literature that is useful. They feel that just exploring their feelings is good enough - they should be reading about leveraged buy-outs or how to get thin. We live in a culture that is so absolutely, madly focused on commercialism and on creating money and completely turned away from any other kind of creative value. People don't generally turn to poetry unless they're bereaved or have fallen in love. Or in adolescence, when their feelings are very strong and turbulent. I think most of us are dying for lack of spirit in this culture."

"No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool. Writers, alas, have to be fools in public, while the rest of the human race can cover its tracks."

"Someday every woman will have orgasms- like every family has color TV- and we can all get on with the business of life."

"I went for years not finishing anything. Because of course when you finish something you can be judged.... I had poems which were rewritten so many times I suspect it was just a way of avoiding sending them out."

"I don't believe what you believe," I yelled, "and I don't respect your beliefs and I don't respect you for holding them. If you can honestly make a statement like that about the power behind the throne, how can you possibly understand anything about me or the things I'm struggling with? I don't want to live by the things you live by, I don't want that kind of life and I don't see why I should be judged by its standards."

"Bigamy is having one husband too many. Monogamy is the same."

"There is still the feeling that women's writing is a lesser class of writing, that what goes on in the nursery or the bedroom is not as important as what goes on in the battlefield, that what women know about is a less category of knowledge."

"In a bad marriage, friends are the invisible glue. If we have enough friends, we may go on for years, intending to leave, talking about leaving - instead of actually getting up and leaving."

"Fame turns out to be a powerful instrument of grace because it humbles its chosen victims in a hurry. You sail into it, your canvas swelled with grandiosity, and when your fifteen minutes are over and you are becalmed, you realize that grandiosity cannot take you where you need to go.Only then do you learn to row like hell, asking God for the strength to stay afloat."

"Jealousy is all the fun you think they had."

"If every day I dare to remember that I am here on loan that this house this hillside these minutes are all leased to me not given I will never despair."

"I had forgotten how awful it was to be a woman alone--the leering glances, the catcalls, the offers of help which you dared not accept for fear of incurring a sexual debt. The awful sense of vulnerability. No wonder I had gone from man to man and always wound up married. How could I have left Bennett? How could I have forgotten?"

"Critics write out of intellectual exercise, not poets. Poets write straight from the heart."

"I have accepted fear as a part of life - specifically the fear of change... I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back."

"We're programmed for suffering, not joy. The masochism is built in at a very early age. You're supposed to work and suffer - and the trouble is: you believe it."

"Beware of the man who denounces woman writers, his penis is tiny and he cannot spell."

"And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more."

"We are so scared of being judged that we look for every excuse to procrastinate."

"Singularity shows something wrong in the mind."

"Fame means millions of people have the wrong idea of who you are."

"I thought to spend my declining years writing poetry and teaching - but that won't pay the Bergdorf's bill. I think I'll move to somewhere life is cheaper."

"There are no atheists on turbulent airplanes."

"Ambivalence is a wonderful tune to dance to. It has a rhythm all its own."

"Sometimes it was worth all the disadvantages of marriage just to have that: one friend in an indifferent world."

"You don't have to beat a woman if you can make her feel guilty."

"When women have so absorbed the disease of sexism that they themselves can inflict it on each other, we clearly have a perfect, self-replenishing machine for the continuation of sexism. Unable to turn our assertiveness against men, we turn it against each other. Thus we remain stuck in the troubles we always had. It is imperative we renovate the machine -- no, not renovate it, but smash it entirely, so that we allow women to be all they need to be."

"But if the gods do not exist at all - then we are lost,' I said.On the contrary - we are found!' said Aesop.But when we are afraid, who can we turn to, if not the gods?'Ourselves. We turn to ourselves anyway. We only pretend there are gods and that they care about us. It is a comforting falsehood."

"The stones themselves are thick with history, and those cats that dash through the alleyways must surely be the ghosts of the famous dead in feline disguise."

"Many people today believe that cynicism requires courage. Actually, cynicism is the height of cowardice. It is innocence and open-heartedness that requires the true courage-however often we are hurt as a result of it."

"All writing problems are psychological problems. Blocks usually stem from the fear of being judged. If you imagine the world listening, you'll never write a line. That's why privacy is so important. You should write first drafts as if they will never be shown to anyone."

"Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame."

"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."

"I guess the thing that I'm most proud of is that I kept on writing poetry. I understand that poetry is sort of the source of everything I do. It's the source of my creativity."

"Without the gods, how would I sing?' I asked.With your own voice,' he said."

"The trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more."

"Rendall's first law of jealousy: jealousy does the cock harder and pussy wetter."