Fiction is ideally suited to re-creating the important emotional aspects of history.

I did not intend to be a writer. I first wanted to be a lawyer, like my father. Then I got bit by the bug of philosophy and wanted to be a philosophy professor. I went to graduate school and quickly discovered it was impossible for a woman in those days - this was the early fifties - to be a philosopher, so I gave that up.

Many people spend the ends of their lives alone, and probably a lot of years in the middle of their lives, and I'm glad I had the opportunity to experience the rewards of solitude.

Solitude offers a lot that being coupled or being in a group does not. It helps us learn what we are capable of.

I am not a psychological novelist, and I try very hard not to allow the reader to see the plight or circumstances of the characters as individual psychological plights. That's my preference; still, a lot of people do read my novels as psychological studies, and they're right to read them that way too, if that's what they mean to them.

Being alone for a woman is probably much more scary than for a man. I'm all for getting over our fears by facing them head-on.

Sexism goes so deep that at first it's hard to see; you think it's just reality.