The truth we have to face about the world we live in is that it's driven by profit, and contradictions and doubts are not profitable. They yield wisdom, but wisdom is not profitable. I find pleasure in doubt, but let's face it, my pleasure is not very profitable. To me, the truth is that things mean many things at once, and all of them opposed to each other, and all of them true.

He must have smiled at me, though I don't really know, but I don't like to think that I would love someone who hadn't first smiled at me.

One of the things reading does, it makes your loneliness manageable if you are an essentially lonely person.

If you just sit there, and you're a writer, you're bound to write crap. A lot of American writing is crap. And a lot of American writers are professionals.

I've never gotten used to winter and never will.

I've written a book about my mother, and I don't remember anyone going to Antigua or calling up my mother and verifying her life. There is something about this book that drives people mad with the autobiographical question.

What distinguished my life from my brother's is that my mother didn't like me. When I became a woman, I seemed to repel her.