I don't know - is everything the U.S. does a shocking embarrassment?

Your sons weren't made to like you. That's what grandchildren are for.

If to live is to progress, if you are lucky, from foolishness to wisdom, then to write novels is to broadcast the various stages of your foolishness.

As soon as you bring up money, I notice, conversation gets sociological, then political, then moral.

Some novelists are luckier than others in the eras of their formative intellectual years, but all Weltanschauungs return, which means that most novelists have at least a chance of a revival.

everything is toxic. That's the point. You can't avoid toxins. Thinking you can is just another symptom of the toxic overload stage.

There weren't too many books by women that were taught in school, so I read those on my own, and the books I read were as accessible as the ones we were reading in school.