Quotes from Diana Trilling

We are all of us, men and women both, the creatures of culture: we do and feel what our societies ask us to, and the demands put upon us are not always consistent or precisely correlated with biology.

There's much to be said for challenging fate instead of ducking behind it.

We lived our lives as if life was forever. To live one's life without a sense of time is to squander it.

We lived our lives as if life was forever. To live one's life without a sense of time is to squander it.

Long-married couples balance their checkbooks as a substitute for love-making, or they refuse each other love by protesting one another's financial error or excess.

Surely going to bed with a man before marriage was the most courageous act of my life.

I regard the whole of my life as having been lived in an anxious world.

I learned early in life that to laugh before breakfast was to cry before dinner.

There's much to be said for challenging fate instead of ducking behind it.