In other parts of the country people tried to stay together for the sake of the children. In New York they tried to work things out for the sake of the apartment.

I started writing one afternoon when I was twenty, and ever since then I have written every day. At first I had to force myself. Then it became part of my identity, and I did it without thinking.

Most people would have found it grotesque, but when you're in love nothing is so abstract or horrible that it can't be thought of as cute.

I meet people at book signings. My record now, for signing, is ten and a half hours in one sitting.

They're hungry for something they know nothing about, but we, we know all too well that the price of fame is the loss of privacy.

No one writes dialect better than Flannery O'Connor. No one should even try.

She's afraid to tell me anything important, knowing I'll only turn around and write about it. In my mind, I'm like a friendly junkman, building things from the little pieces of scrap I find here and there, but my family's started to see things differently. Their personal lives are the so-called pieces of scrap I so casually pick up, and they're sick of it. More and more often their stories begin with the line "You have to swear you'll never repeat this." I always promise, but it's generally understood that my word means nothing.