“Yes, it struck her now that this whole business of the bull was like a life; the important birth, the fair chance, the tentative, then assured, then half-dispairing circulations of the ring, an obstacle negotiated - a feat improperly recognized - boredom, resignation, collapse: then another, more convulsive birth, a new start; the circumspect endeavours to obtain one's bearings in a world now frankly hostile, the apparent but deceptive encouragement of one's judges, half of whom were asleep, the swervings into the beginnings of disaster because of that same negligible obstacle one had surely taken before at a stride, the final enmeshment in the toils of enemies one was never quite certain weren't friends more clumsy than actively ill-disposed, followed by disaster, capitulation, disintegration.”

“Men are essentially useless for the difficult things in life. For births and deaths, one clearheaded woman is more useful than a half-dozen men.”

“A half truth, like half a brick, is always more forcible as an argument than a whole one. It carries better.”

“the natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster. strangely enough it all works out in the end... it's a mystery.”

“I use a whole lot of half-assed semicolons; there was one of them just now; that was a semicolon after 'semicolons,' and another one after 'now.”

“Wake up! If you knew for certain you had a terminal illness--if you had little time left to live--you would waste precious little of it! Well, I'm telling you...you do have a terminal illness: It's called birth. You don't have more than a few years left. No one does! So be happy now, without reason--or you will never be at all.”