We write out of revenge against reality, to dream and enter the lives of others.

The act of nutrition is not a purely physiological event... The family meal is a formality that cultivates in us... a capacity for sharing, generosity, thoughtfulness, a talent for civilized conversation.

I venture that those of us who are most serene when faced with the possibility of nothingness are the ones who've reached furthest to the downward and upward of their beings.

Oh, save me God, but not quite yet.

Mine [parents] started out more from scratch, because I'm constantly aware of what they suffered in the war.

I think we're much more eager to know about our parents than we were in the seventies.

I write because in the act of creation there comes that mysterious, abundant sense of being both parent and child; I am giving birth to an Other and simultaneously being reborn as a child in the playground of creation.