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Writing is work. It’s also gambling. You don’t get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but ­essentially you’re on your own. ­Nobody is ma...more

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Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.

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A lot of people call you a feminist painter.""What indeed," I say. "I hate party lines, I hate ghettos. Anyway. I'm too old to have invented it and yo...more

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He wants to see, he wants to know, only to see and know. I'm aware that it is this mentality, this curiosity, which is responsible for the hydrogen bo...more

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What thumbsuckers we all are...when it comes to mothers.

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They are boiling with the pressured energy of explosive forces confined in a small space, and with the fervor of all religious movements in their earl...more

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You can wipe your feet on me, twist my motives around all you like, you can dump millstones on my head and drown me in the river, but you can’t get me...more

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Though I knew how this failure would hurt you, I had to fold like a grey moth and let go.You could not believe I was more than your echo.

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He was a dork, a dink, a dong… Why should the male member be used as a term of abuse? No man hated his own dorkdinkdong, quite the opposite. But maybe...more

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From her handbag she takes a round gilt compact with violets on the cover. She opens it, unclosing her other self, and runs her fingertip around the c...more

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We'll choose knowledge no matter what, we'll maim ourselves in the process, we'll stick our hands into the flames for it if necessary. Curiosity is no...more

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The Three of them were beautiful, in the way all girls of that age are beautiful. It can't be helped, that sort of beauty, nor can it be conserved; it...more

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Sympathy from strangers can be ruinous.

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I don't want a man around, what use are they except for ten seconds' worth of half babies

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... Remember that forgiveness too is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest.