I have lots of notebooks around, because one great advantage of writing by hand-in addition to how much it slows you down-is that it makes me write at the speed that I feel I should be composing, rather than faster than I can think, which is what happens to me on any keyboard.

I am compulsive about writing, I need to do it the way I need sleep and exercise and food and sex; I can go without it for a while, but then I need it.

There is no straightforward negotiation with a four year old.

I try to see the whole woman,' Eddie said to Hannah. 'Of course I recognize that she's old, but there are photographs - or the equivalent of photographs in one's imagination of anyone's life. A whole life, I mean. I can picture her when she was much younger than I am - because there are always gestures and expressions that are ingrained, ageless. An old woman doesn't see herself as an old woman, and neither do I. I try to see her her whole life in her. There's something so moving about someone's whole life.

We permit bad taste in this country. In fact, we even encourage it - and reward it in all manner of ways.

Life forces enough final decisions on us. We should have the sense to avoid as many of the unnecessary ones as we can.

A sentence boiled in her, but she could not yet see it clearly.