I think all art comes out of conflict. When I write I am always looking for the dramatic kernel of an event, the junctures of people's lives when they go in one direction, not another.

A writer’s life is in his work, and that is the place to find him.

I had forgotten that time wasn't fixed like concrete but in fact was fluid as sand, or water. I had forgotten that even misery can end.

Obviously, there is pleasure in the execution of any sort of art, and using language, as Nabokov felt also, is an exquisite process.

Princeton is quite integrated. Women are professors at Princeton. Women are students at Princeton. That began in the 1970s.

A man will reveal his true self, or so it seems, on the tennis court.

I've never given up. I've always kept going. I don't feel that I could afford to give up. That would be the beginning of the end.