A lot of sad things have happened to my friends' children, people you knew as babies. They've been killed or become crazy or all kinds of tragic things. There are some people whose children haven't talked to them in fifteen years. There's all kind of meshugaas in this world.

But what's a writer for? The whole point is to put yourself into other lives, other heads-writers have always done that. If you screw up, so someone will tell you, that's all.

I don't believe civilization can do a lot more than educate a person's senses.

If you're feminist, it means that you've noticed that male ownership of the direction of female lives has been the order of the day for a few thousand years, and it isn't natural.

There isn't a story written that isn't about blood and money. People and their relationship to each other is the blood, the family. And how they live, the money of it.

Hindsight, usually looked down upon, is probably as valuable as foresight, since it does include a few facts.

To be modest means that you have something to be modest about.