But I felt certain that if the world would stop indulging wars and famines and other perils, it would be possible for human beings to embarrass each other to death. Our self-destruction might take a little longer that way, but I believe it would be no less complete.

When people say that German or any other language is romantic... all they really mean is that they've enjoyed a past in the language

There's nothing as scary as the future.

The former stewardess glared at her ex-pilot husband as if he had been speaking, and thinking, in the absence of sufficient oxygen.

My life is a reading list.

What was even more germane was my study of the history of religion. It was one of the few things in school I was fascinated by.

You don't want to be ungenerous toward people who give you prizes, but it is never the social or political message that interests me in a novel. I begin with an interest in a relationship, a situation, a character.