As a writer, I must be free to say what is in all the diversity I can command. I regret the distorting prejudices that surround me, whether they affect homosexuals or men or the physically handicapped and I can’t alone defeat them. They will not defeat me, either as a lesbian or a writer.

Love is the terrible secret people are suspected of unless they’re married, then one always suspects they don’t.

The kinds of good friends I have are people who are perfectly willing to have me say I’ll see them in six months, and live right next door.

Evelyn wanted to be charming, provocative, desirable, attributes she had never aspired to before out of pride, perhaps, or fear of failure. Now they seemed most instinctive. She was finding, in the miracle of her particular fall, that she was, by nature, a woman. And what a lively thing it was to be, a woman.

Evelyn looked at Ann, the child she had always wanted, the friend she had once had, the lover she had never considered. Of course she wanted Ann. Pride, morality, and inexperience had kept her from admitting it frankly to herself from the first moment she had seen Ann.

I didn’t want to be a boy, ever, but I was outraged that his height and intelligence were graces for him and gaucheries for me.

I’ve never been resigned to ready-made ideas as I was to ready-made clothes, perhaps because although I couldn’t sew, I could think.

The message of women’s liberation is that women can love each other and ourselves against our degrading education.

This desert town was man’s own miracle of pure purposelessness.

If we don’t bear witness as citizens, as people, as individuals, the right that we have had to life is sacrificed. There is a silence, instead of a speaking presence.