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

I think it's one of the reasons I wrote my book later in life. My parents didn't have these extreme alternations of conduct. They were very sweet to me.

Lovers, children, heroes, none of them do we fantasize as extravagantly as we fantasize our parents.

Why are there no great women artists?' sounds as ignorant of human geography as the query 'Why are there no Eskimo tennis teams?

The choice between starving and being eaten is an exotic one.

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.