I don't think San Francisco needs defending. I never meet anyone who doesn't love the place, Americans or others.

Mother's room, and mother's need for privacy become a valuable lesson in respect for other people's rights.

I don't know much about creative writing programs. But they're not telling the truth if they don't teach, one, that writing is hard work and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer.

All I do is give interviews and spend time being photographed.

I wasn't an active feminist in the '60s, never have been.

The first casualty in any war is the truth. In World War II, I was part of a group of people who used to meet once a week with the sole purpose of analyzing the news and trying to work out what we weren't being told. We thought that we were clever, but we had absolutely no idea what was really going on. It was only years later that we learned the true story.

As soon as I got the Nobel Prize my back collapsed and I was in hospital.