Having a book is somewhat like having a baby, as many woman writers have observed before me: the conception, the long preparation, the wait, the grow….

one keeps one's friends better when one is alone. The corollary to this is that one loses one's friends, slowly, when one sees them too often or when….

Praise requires constant renewal and expansion..

A hand up is worthier than one's own fist grasping a higher rung of the ladder..

We were determined by public opinions of us. Would we think we existed without outside confirmation? And how long would we live apart from others bef….

My eyes glaze over at a writer solving tiny problems..

Talk uses up ideas. Once I have spoken them aloud, they are lost to me, dissipated into the noisy air like smoke. Only if I bury them, like bulbs, in….

My old friend, water, my good companion, my beloved mother and father: I am its most natural offspring..

What others regard as retreat from them or rejection of them is not those things at all but instead a breeding ground for greater friendship, a cultu….

Writers are entirely egocentric. To them, few things in their lives have meaning or importance unless they give promise of serving some creative purp….

These short stories establish Sontag's originality . . . her unique vision, her success with experiments in the form . . . Sontag makes a wonderful s….

Old age is somewhat like dieting. Every day there is less of us to be observed..

Searching for the self when I was entirely alone was hazardous. What if I found not so much a great emptiness as a space full of unpleasant contents,….

The reason that extended solitude seemed so hard to endure was not that we missed others but that we began to wonder if we ourselves were present, be….