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

We use our parents like recurring dreams, to be entered into when needed.

But there is no doubt that to attempt a novel of ideas is to give oneself a handicap: the parochialism of our culture is intense. For instance, decade after decade bright young men and women emerge from their universities able to say proudly: 'Of course I know nothing about German literature.' It is the mode. The Victorians knew everything about German literature, but were able with a clear conscience not to know much about the French.

A woman writer, quitting love before literature when love lets her down, will put literature before love.

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.

It is the mark of great people to treat trifles as trifles and important matters as important.

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