Nothing quite has reality for me till I write it all down--revising and embellishing as I go. I'm always waiting for things to be over so I can get home and commit them to paper.

we write as if our lives depended upon it. They do.

In loving life you love what can't survive.

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.

You should write first drafts as if they will never be shown to anyone.

A book is a box brimming with incendiary material. The reader strikes the match.

Art keeps one young, I think, because it keeps one perpetually a beginner, perpetually a child.