Every time you finish something ... you figure you've finally learned to write, right? Then you start something else and it turns out you haven't. You have learned how to write that story, or that book, but you haven't learned how to write the next one.

Old age is not a good thing. It can be really hard, and those of us who have it a little easier should keep in mind that there are hundreds of thousands of people who are not as well off.

Well, you have children so you know: little children little troubles, big children, big troubles - it's a saying in Yiddish. Maybe the Chinese said it too.

The wrong word is like a lie jammed inside the story.

I begin by writing paragraphs that don’t have an immediate relation to a plot. The sound of the story comes first.

What we owe men is some freedom from their part in a murderous game in which they kick each other to death with one foot, bracing themselves on our various comfortable places with the other.

You know the mind is an astonishing, long-living, erotic thing.