In twenty years I've never had a day when I didn't have to think about someone else's needs. And this means the writing has to be fitted around it.

In your life there are a few places, or maybe only the one place, where something happened, and then there are all the other places.

Few people, very few, have a treasure, and if you do you must hang onto it. You must not let yourself be waylaid, and have it taken from you.

I would really hope this would make people see the short story as an important art, not just something you played around with until you got a novel.

Always remember that when a man goes out of the room, he leaves everything in it behind. When a woman goes out she carries everything that happened in the room along with her.

I began to understand that there were certain talkers - certain girls - whom people liked to listen to, not because of what they, the girls, had to say, but because of the delight they took in saying it. A delight in themselves, a shine on their faces, a conviction that whatever they were telling about was remarkable and that they themselves could not help but give pleasure. There might be other people - people like me - who didn't concede this, but that was their loss. And people like me would never be the audience these girls were after, anyway.

She would live now, not read.