I was just reviewed by Robert Gottlieb, who was my editor at 'The New Yorker,' and he sort of wondered at the fact that I still need to exorcise my parents at my age. I think he makes a basic mistake in thinking that exorcism can ever be total. The exorcism of your parents will still be occurring on your own deathbed.

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

The irreversibility of time. That's the hardest thing to accept at our age, that's the most violent aspect of death.

I shall never cease to marvel at the way we beg for love and tyranny.

If I were ever to go mad it would be on Thanksgiving Day, that day of guilt and grace when the family hangs upon you like an ax over a sacrificial victim, like the oven's heat on that poor bird.

Americans and their desire to be novelists, the American novel should be listed in medical dictionaries alongside Megalomania and Obsessional Neuroses.

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.