I have an instinct for survival, for self-preservation.

The spring of 1930 marks the end of a period of grave concern...American business is steadily coming back to a normal level of prosperity.

But life never lets you go, does it? You can't put down life the way you put down a book.

Life isn't just addition and subtraction. There's also the accumulation, the multiplication, of loss, of failure.

Early in life, the world divides crudely into those who have had sex and those who haven't. Later, into those who have known love, and those who haven't. Later still - at least, if we are lucky (or, on the other hand, unlucky) - it divides into those who have endured grief, and those who haven't. These divisions are absolute; they are tropics we cross.

Is any novelist going to recognize the moment when he or she has nothing more to say? It is a brave thing to admit. And since as a professional writer you are full of anxiety anyway, you could easily misread the signs.

To own a certain book - and to choose it without help - is to define yourself.