I think the Jews are an amazing group of people and their survival is amazing.

Books go out into the world, travel mysteriously from hand to hand, and somehow find their way to the people who need them at the times when they need them ... Cosmic forces guide such passings-along.

Throughout much of history, women writers have capitulated to male standards, and have paid too much heed to what Virginia Woolf calls "the angel in the house." She is that little ghost who sits on one's shoulder while one writes and whispers, "Be nice, don't say anything that will embarrass the family, don't say anything your man will disapprove of ..." [ellipsis in original] The "angel in the house" castrates one's creativity because it deprives one of essential honesty, and many women writers have yet to win the freedom to be honest with themselves.

Surviving means being born over and over.

Turning fifty ... is like flying: hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.

Blocks usually stem from fear of being judged. If you imagine the world is listening, you'll never write a line.

Isn't that the problem? That women have been swindled for centuries into substituting adornment for love, fashion (as it were) for passion?