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

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

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

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

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.

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

The irreversibility of time. That's the hardest thing to accept at our age, that's the most violent aspect of death.