I think I'm like most novelists in that my books have gotten farther and farther away from autobiography the longer I've been writing them.

That's what makes life so hard for women, that instead of thinking that this is the way things are, we always think it's the way we are.

I haven't seen so much tippy-toeing around since the last time I went to the ballet. When members of the arts community were askedthis week about one of their biggest benefactors, Philip Morris, and its requests that they lobby the New York City Council on the company's behalf, the pas de deux of self- justification was so painstakingly choreographed that it constituted a performance all by itself.

I do think that people who are now in their sixties and their seventies are living a different kind of life than their grandparents led, even in these tough times. A lot of them are more active, a lot of them are still working, which was not the case when our grandparents were in their sixties.

I think one of the hardest things about doing a book in the first person is that to a certain extent each day, when you begin to do your work, you're climbing into somebody else's skin.

I think that we really fool ourselves about our ability to be safe and secure nowadays.

the most sacred business of judges is not to ratify the will of the majority but to protect the minority from its tyranny.