We've had parallel lives. And frankly, I prefer mine to his. I would not like to be George Bush.

I started to read my first book at about the age of six. I started to write a book simultaneously. Not to compete, just to augment. And that's how one starts. Or I started.

Class is the most difficult subject for American writers to deal with as it is the most difficult for the English to avoid.

I don't want anything. I don't want a job. I don't want to be respectable. I don't want prizes. I turned down the National Institute of Arts and Letters when I was elected to it in 1976 on the grounds that I already belonged to the Diners Club.

Most lives are spent putting on and taking off masks.

All children alarm their parents, if only because you are forever expecting to encounter yourself.

People have forgotten the effects of prohibition. We have become the United Statesof Amnesia.