There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be.

Perhaps it is not such a bad marriage after all? There are innumerable marriages where two people, both twisted and wrong in their depths, are well matched, making each other miserable in the way they need, in the way the pattern of their life demands.

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

Whenever I met anyone who knew anything, I would bore them stiff until they told me what they knew.

Free women," said Anna, wryly. She added, with an anger new to Molly, so that she earned another quick scrutinizing glance from her friend: "They still define us in terms of relationships with men, even the best of them.

All politicians are not the same. I've never felt that way. What is the same is that voters get very excited about new faces, like Clinton and Blair - and they have unrealistic expectations that the world will change overnight. A cynical old hand like myself knows that it won't.

I'm sure that everybody feels a kind of permanent anguish about what's going on in the world.