Permanence, I once copied down from a magazine, is what we all want when we can love and can be loved; change is what we want when we cannot.

They’re fathers second, Jimmy said. They’re men first.

Lovers are allowed to be as cruel as anything to the one who dissappoints them.

I did believe, from my experience of life and of looking at the world, that men hated women.

My life burned inside me. Even such as it was, it was the only record of me, and it was my only creation, and something in me would not accept that it was insignificant.

A bugler sounded the Last Post. Heartbreak made audible.

If there were nothing else, reading would – obviously – be worth living for.

Did anyone ever hear of an intelligent fantasy?

Do the thing that’s less passive. Do the active thing. There’s more of the human in that.

Let me just say that I am not often lonely in country places. In cities I am, like the writers of the letters. Nature doesn't break your heart: other people do. Yet, we cannot live apart from each other in bowers feeding on nectar. We're in this together, this getting through our lives, as the fact that we are word-users shows.