Life is like boxing in many unsettling respects. But boxing is only like boxing.

Where there must be a choice, a girl will choose Daddy. Even if you are Mommy, you concede that this must be so: you remember when you were a girl, too.

Like most people, I can be very easily hurt.

Before I undertake a lengthy project, I have usually given much thought to it over a period of years. My files are filled with likely subjects - which perhaps, one day, I will develop.

Adriana loved even the rank animal smell of the man's body, her sweat-slicked breasts and belly flattened beneath him, and her arms and legs clutching him as a drowning woman might clutch another person to save her life. Don't don't don't don't leave me. DON'T LEAVE ME. As in animal copulation the frenzy is to be locked together not out of sentiment or choice but physical compulsion. As if bolts of electric current ran through both their bodies and would only release them from each other when it ceased.

Honorary degrees and lifetime achievement awards are very encouraging. I know that it might sound strange that a writer who has published many books still needs encouragement, but this is true.

Memory blurs, that's the point. If memory didn't blur you wouldn't have the fool's courage to do things again, again, again, that tear you apart.