Well, by now you must know yourself, honey, whatever you do, life don't stop. It only sits a minute and dreams a dream.

I'm seventy-five now. I also have the peculiar luck of having a sister and brother who are fourteen and sixteen years older than me. Their health is not good. It couldn't be at that age. But their spirits are. Both my brother and my sister are an example to me.

I don't have any degrees. I went to Hunter College one year and New York University another year. It's just on the basis of my books that I've been hired at any of the places I've been.

I lived in a house in the East Bronx, a totally Jewish neighborhood on East 172nd Street. You didn't see Christians much, although one lived next door. We thought they were kind of a minority.

I write for the still, small possibility of justice.

I didn't intend to become a short-story writer. I became one because I finished a couple of short stories and realized that's what I wanted to do and could do with children and with all the other things in my life.

Rosiness is not a worse windowpane than gloomy gray when viewing the world.