My writing is full of lives I might have led.

The body can't distinguish between cleansing and punishing for the body is ignorant, and mute besides.

"Politics" per se is absent from my writing but there is usually a moral (if ironic) compass.

To be Jewish is to be specifically identified with a history. And if you're not aware of that when you're a child, the whole tradition is lost.

The suicide does not play the game, does not observe the rules. He leaves the party too soon, and leaves the other guests painfully uncomfortable.

Truths are the last thing you learn about your family. By the time you learn, you're no longer their child.

I don't think that any 'ism' is higher than literature or art. So I'm a formalist. I greatly honor and respect the form of a work.