Intellectual responses are known as opinions and Mary had them and had them. Still she was so little of an ideologue as to be sometimes unsettling in her refusal of tribal reaction - left or right, male or female, that sort of thing. She was doggedly personal and often this meant being so aslant that there was, in this determined rationalist, an endearing crankiness, very American and homespun somehow.

I see her in the image of a Valkyrie maiden, riding her steed into the circle, amid thunder and lightning, and out again, bearing the body of some dead hero ac…

The cultural heroine of my generation... before feminist writing got bogged down in victimisation.

We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story.

Disregard public opinion when it interferes with your duty.

I don't ask other men's opinions. I have my own.

He who has an opinion of his own, but depends upon the opinion and taste of others, is a slave.