Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too. If she doesn’t show up invited, eventually she just shows up

I'm such a control freak. I want to control even my own death. Decide when I will die and how.

Every time I asked a question, that magnificent teacher, instead of giving the answer, showed me how to find it. She taught me to organise my thoughts, to do research, to read and listen, to seek alternatives, to resolve old problems with new solutions, to argue logically. Above all, she taught me not to believe anything blindly, to doubt, and to question even what seemed irrefutably true, such as man's superiority over woman, or one race or social class over another.

Write what should not be forgotten.

Accept the children the way we accept trees—with gratitude, because they are a blessing—but do not have expectations or desires. You don’t expect trees to change, you love them as they are.

When my daughter Paula died, I was in the deepest pain, and my mother said, "This kind of sorrow is like a long, narrow, dark channel. You have to walk this channel alone and be sure that there is light at the other ending. Just keep walking."

I was born in the middle of World War II, the middle of the Holocaust; I was born when there was no declaration of human rights, when feminism was not an issue, when children were working in factories. I mean, today's world is a better place!