My mother didn't raise me to be a critic, but I seem to have become one anyway.

I will try not to panic, to keep my standard of living modest and to work steadily, even shyly, in the spirit of those medieval carvers who so fondly sculpted the undersides of choir seats.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous, for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty, lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are embarrassed by the miracle, and crushed by remonstrance.

Americans have been conditioned to respect newness, whatever it costs them.

I'm not against TV; I don't go on the morning talk shows because I'm not invited. If I was, I might go.

I think people do look to writers to tell the truth in a way that nobody else quite will, not politicians or ministers or sociologists. A writer's job, is to, by way of fiction, somehow describe the way we live. And to me, this seems an important task, very worth doing, and I think also, to the reading public, it seems, even though they might not articulate it, it seems to them something worth doing also.

An affair wants to spill, to share its glory with the world. No act is so private it does not seek applause.