Marie Calloway has a very specific literary personality that the reader is intrigued by: she's masochistic, loves to experiment, is quickly bored and intermittently self-hating, very hip, rebellious. Figuring her out is a gripping adventure.

Hell is God's Absence.

If I take a less defensive tone, I'd admit that I couldn't write today a very jazzy, contemporary look at America as I did in 1979 in States of Desire.

I didn't want to write a biographie romancee especially since I already write novels, nor did I want to challenge the rules of the biography game, arbitrary as those rules might be

Paris... is a world meant for the walker alone, for only the pace of strolling can take in all the rich (if muted) detail.

Psychoanalysis feeds on intensity, as though life were all flame and no ash.

At certain crucial moments - an emergency or an opportunity - one must act first and think later.