One writes not by will but by surrender.

There were 117 psychoanalysts on the Pan Am flight to Vienna and I'd been treated by at least six of them. And married a seventh.

A poem (surely someone has said this before) is a one-night stand, a short story a love affair, and a novel a marriage.

Women in America read 'lifestyle' pages which are really glorifications of shopping. They teach us we must veil ourselves in make-up to be loved. And we willingly take the veil, thinking ourselves freed by it. Make-up is no more optional for us than the veil is for Arab women: it is our Western version of the chador.

Fear is a sign-usually a sign that I'm doing something right.

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

I want you. I want you. I want you. Anything to avoid saying: I love you.