I look upon another's insistence on the merits of his or her life - duties, intellect, accomplishment - and see that most of it is nonsense.

Me, my literary reputation is mostly abroad, but I am anchored here in New York. I can't think of any other place I'd rather die than here.

I have thousands of opinions still - but that is down from millions - and, as always, I know nothing.

I feel sorry for the man who marries you... because everyone thinks you're sweet and you're not.

It is like visiting one's funeral, like visiting loss in its purest and most monumental form, this wild darkness, which is not only unknown but which one cannot enter as oneself.

True stories, autobiographical stories, like some novels, begin long ago, before the acts in the account, before the birth of some of the people in the tale.

Often writing is like a struggle to get back to a kind of belated, quite impure virginity.