If I had to be anything," he told her, "I'd probably be a socialist, but I don't want to be anything.

It's my experience that very few writers, young or old, are really seeking advice when they give out their work to be read. They want support; they want someone to say, "Good job."

Adolescence-is it the first time in life we discover that we have something terrible to hide from those who love us?

Your memory is a monster; you forget - it doesn't. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you - and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!

A truly happy woman drives some men and almost every other woman absolutely crazy

The history of a city was like the history of a family—there is closeness and even affection, but death eventually separates everyone from each other. It is only the vividness of memory that keeps the dead alive forever; a writer’s job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as our personal memories.

You can learn a lot from your lovers, but-for the most part-you get to keep your friends longer, and you learn more from them.