She was an expert at the art of sudden appearance.

Nothing moves at the Hotel New Hampshire! We're screwed down here-for life!

Half my life is an act of revision; more than half the act is performed with small changes.

Just when you begin thinking of yourself as memorable, you run into someone who can't even remember having met you

I am not attracted to writers by style. What style do Dickens, Grass, and Vonnegut have in common? How silly! I am attracted to what makes them angry, what makes them passionate, what outrages them, what they applaud and find sympathetic in human beings and what they detest about human beings, too. They are writers of great emotional range.

More than a half, maybe as much as two-thirds of my life as a writer is rewriting. I wouldn't say I have a talent that's special. It strikes me that I have an unusual kind of stamina.

It is exhausting to be seventeen and not know who you are.