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

The spiritual destiny of Hawaii has been shaped by a Calvinist theory of paternalism enacted by the descendants of the missionaries who had carried it there: a will to do good for unfortunates regardless of what the unfortunates thought about it.

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

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.

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.

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