I read on a Kindle. I must be of the opinion that the new way to read is a pretty good way to read. It's a new way. Those of us who like the smell of books get upset but nevertheless this is the way we're going.

I'm bad at thinking about society. I love to make fun of very small aspects. For instance the privacy rules we have in the States. Where you sign this thing that you've never read, and if you ever read it you discover there's no privacy whatsoever. But I don't know how to think sociologically, to tell you the truth. My son is a political scientist and my daughter-in-law is a sociologist. I can't think that way. I am not a good political militant at all. I keep thinking about what the other side must look like.

I imagine witches to be people who sit around like my witty grandmother, people who are injustice collectors or humiliation collectors. I choose to imagine that's what a witch is. The reason witches are so evil is because they're so unhappy and so hurt.

First book was handwritten, then the printing press, now we've got our Kindles. To be able to push a button and a dictionary comes up. And then, at my age, that I can make the letters any size I want, and that I can carry all of William Shakespeare, all of Gogol, all of Franz Kafka in my handbag? You've got to love it.

Once you start on an idea it proliferates in itself.

I don't go to the movies because they scare me. I don't like anything that is suspenseful, even pleasantly so.

I did translations of Grimms' Fairy Tales and became very charmed about that way of looking at things. Fairy tales tell a lot of truths. Just as a side point, for instance, we always think the bad guys in fairy tales are the stepmothers, who are witches. But where are the fathers when the witches are killing and mishandling their children? Away. They are on a business trip. They are hunting, they are away. Wow, you know! No one says the fathers are the bad guys! It's one of the things you don't say. But my goodness, where are they?