I didn't find this memoir of these two eccentric people so different from doing my memoirs of De Sade or Simone Weil. My parents in their own way are as odd as Sade.

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.

Like most writers I know, I love being on stage. I’ve sublimated the dramatic urge by teaching and by making people laugh.

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

As to why people like Joseph Lelyveld are writing memoirs, I think they're just catching on the coattails of the trend.

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

All our parents have levels of deviousness. We're driven to write about this discrepancy between the bright shining selves they invented and the monsters lurking underneath.