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.

one forgives parents as naturally as one emancipates oneself from them - usually shortly afterward.

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.

Only friends will tell you the truths you need to hear to make your life bearable.

Friendship is by its very nature freer of deceit than any other relationship we can know because it is the bond least affected by striving for power, physical pleasure, or material profit, most liberated from any oath of duty or of constancy. With Eros the body stands naked, in friendship our spirit is denuded.

how the French can talk. About a stew, about a fly on the parapet, about death, about anything.

One learns much more by writing fiction, because the insights come from those deeper subconscious levels where the greater and more interesting truths lie.