You reach a point in life where you realize that you might as well do what you need to do, because your being loved or not being loved is really a function of the people you encounter and not of yourself. That is an immensely liberating insight.

It is the city of mirrors, the city of mirages, at once solid and liquid, at once air and stone.

Writers are always at the edge of the inferno, and the fire is licking at our toes. Luckily, this turns us on!

I understand that unless you have a government of laws, rather than a government of people, you cannot protect dissent. And I understand, as a woman who probably would have been burned in the marketplace for witchcraft only about 200 years ago, that I need the First Amendment more than anybody does. And that even if I am repelled by child pornography or Bob Guccione's productions, that I have to protect those things, because essentially it's in my self-interest to do so.

I don't cook. My mother didn't cook. My daughter doesn't cook.

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.

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.