I once wanted to be a personage. Now I am comfortable being a person.

We're tortured, a lot of us, believe me.

Life is so messy that the temptation to straighten it up is very strong. And the results always illusory.

Your kids are launched. You love your work but you understand how to place it in the panorama of the rest of your life. There's this line in the book, and when I wrote it I thought yes, that's it - if you think of life as a job, maybe by the time you get to, say, in my case, 60, you've finally gotten good at it.

high fashion has little to do with what women wear and a lot to do with what retailers mark down later.

All of the qualities that you need to be a good opinion columnist tend to be qualities that aren't valued in women.

The closest thing to an outline is, because my memory is so bad now, if something occurs to me that I think might be important or pivotal, a lot of times I'll scribble notes down somewhere until I can get back to the book. Of course half the time I look at those notes the next morning and think, "What was that about?"