If you don't have children and you don't have a job, you have time for friendship ... People who have jobs are not the best friends to have. It's better to be friends with people who are unemployed.

I walk a lot in New York, not for the exercise but to get from place to place, and because it's the way of having the least contact with human beings.

The telephone is a good way to talk to people without having to offer them a drink.

Not writing is probably the most exhausting profession I've ever encountered.

When I'm supposed to be writing I clean my apartment, take my clothes to the laundry, get organized, make lists, do the dishes. I would never do a dish unless I had to write.

When I was very little, say five or six, I became aware of the fact that people wrote books. Before that, I thought that God wrote books. I thought a book was a manifestation of nature, like a tree.

There are some short essays that are very grave, and most contemporary novels are lighter than air.