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.

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

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

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

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

Art is both a vengeance against reality and a reconciliation with it.

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