Most people, or at least most of the people that I've come into contact with, would like to be written about.

This left me alone to solve the coffee problem - a sort of catch-22, as in order to think straight I need caffeine, and in order to make that happen I need to think straight.

I would be writing and trying to write like Joan Didion. Or if I was reading Raymond Carver. You know, strong stylists. But that's how you find your voice, is imitating other people. So things like that didn't embarrass me, because I thought, well, that's how it goes. That's how everyone learns.

People are often frightened of Parisians, but an American in Paris will find no harsher critic than another American.

I don't really do very well when I'm sent somewhere. A lot of magazines want to send you somewhere to do something. They want you to stow away on a ship, or something like that.

Up close the city constitutes an oppressive series of staircases, but from a distance it inspires fantasies of wealth and power so profound that even our communists are temporarily rendered speechless.

Hugh returned from his trip, and days later I still sounded like a Red Chinese asking questions about the democratic hinterlands. "And you actually saw people smoking in restaurants? Really! And offices, too? Oh, tell me again about the ashtrays in the hospital waiting room, and don't leave anything out."