September 11 was terrible, but if one goes back over the history of the IRA, what happened to the Americans wasn't that terrible.

As you get older, you don't get wiser. You get irritable.

Advice to young writers? Always the same advice: learn to trust our own judgment.

Our society is dependent on some precarious mechanisms, and they are very dicey. They can easily collapse.

Don't read a book out of its right time for you.

Some people obtain fame, others deserve it.

The smell of manure, of sun on foliage, of evaporating water, rose to my head; two steps farther, and I could look down into the vegetable garden enclosed within its tall pale of reeds - rich chocolate earth studded emerald green, frothed with the white of cauliflowers, jeweled with the purple globes of eggplant and the scarlet wealth of tomatoes.