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

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

I write because in the act of creation there comes that mysterious, abundant sense of being both parent and child; I am giving birth to an Other and simultaneously being reborn as a child in the playground of creation.

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

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

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.