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 am very interested in people trying to write because I don't have a big academic background at all.

My vocabulary is adequate for writing notes and keeping journals but absolutely useless for an active moral life.

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

I loved the comradeship of the sixties and the seventies, and I still maintain friendships with the people I worked with then - the ones that are still alive. That's one of the great gifts of our political movements, great friendships . . . and also a few enmities.

I really believe one of the jobs of a writer is to stretch as far as you can into other voices.

Sometimes you find that what is most personal is also what connects you most strongly with others.