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.

Singularity shows something wrong in the mind.

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

Perhaps all artists were, in a sense, housewives: tenders of the earth household.

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.

Solitude is un-American.

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

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.

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

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.

Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy gets the Catholic Church. America gets Hollywood.

I write lustily and humorously. It isn't calculated; it's the way I think. I've invented a writing style that expresses who I am.

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.

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

Friends love misery, in fact. Sometimes, especially if we are too lucky or too successful or too pretty, our misery is the only thing that endears us to our friends.

Where is Hollywood located? Chiefly between the ears. In that part of the American brain lately vacated by God.

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

Men have always detested women's gossip because they suspect the truth: their measurements are being taken and compared.

Women are the only exploited group in history to have been idealized into powerlessness.

Men and women, women and men. It will never work.

Show me a woman who doesn't feel guilty and I'll show you a man.

Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed.

He who can take advice is sometimes superior to him who can give it.

If you don't risk anything, you risk even more.

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

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.

It is the city of mirrors, the city of mirages, at once solid and liquid, at once air and stone.

Jealousy is all the fun you think they had.

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

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.

All my forebears worked for a living. My grandfather painted portraits. My mother too. My aunt painted seascapes.

Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy the Church. America Hollywood.

I don't cook. My mother didn't cook. My daughter doesn't cook.

I have forgotten my rave reviews and memorized my vicious ones - like most writers.

I never became a writer for the money. I am a poet first. Even getting published is a miracle for poets.

I remember everything but forgive anyway.

I think professionalism is important, and professionalism means you get paid.

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.

I write slowly by hand. Publishing is effectively bankrupt for you unless you are Danielle Steele. It takes a year to write book and advances are going down or disappearing.

I'm interested in what happens to people when they get into that publicity machine. We tend to think things have changed, but there's still a deep sexism underlying the way women are treated publicly.

I've never been able to control my public image.

Is a currency worth anything if no one wants it? We used to buy shoes in Italy. Remember?

It's hard to do fiction and nonfiction simultaneously.

My generation was not only maligned in book reviews and attacked in graduate school but we lived to see our adored and adorable daughters wonder why feminism had become a dirty word.

My grandchildren are fabulous and funny.

Poetry is the language we speak in the most terrifying or ecstatic passages of our lives. But the very word poetry scares people. They think of their grade school teachers reciting 'Hiawatha' and they groan.

Poetry is what we turn to in the most emotional moments of our life - when a beloved friend dies, when a baby is born or when we fall in love.

Sexism kind of predisposes us to see men's work as more important than women's, and it is a problem, I guess, as writers, we have to change.