My father really, really pushed me to excel in a way that I resented for years and then realized had really worked for me.

Our love of lockstep is our greatest curse, the source of all that bedevils us. It is the source of homophobia, xenophobia, racism, sexism, terrorism, bigotry of every variety and hue, because it tells us there is one right way to do things, to look, to behave, to feel, when the only right way is to feel your heart hammering inside you and to listen to what its timpani is saying.

I don't really read what people write about me. Someone gives my novel one star; are they a troll? Are they someone who hates my politics and so has decided to do that?

I have a cat, the pet that ranks just above a throw pillow in terms of required responsibility.

I think we now know the limits also of intelligence and rhetoric.

I wondered why I hadn't loved that day more, why I hadn't savored every bit of it...why I hadn't known how good it was to live so normally, so everyday. But you only know that, I suppose, after it's not normal and every day any longer.

If God had meant Harvard professors to appear in People magazine, She wouldn't have invented The New York Review of Books.