Sometimes I ask myself if writing novels is even respectable.

(Such a life)engaged gross quantities of hope and despair and set them wildly side by side, like a Third World country of the heart.

They had, finally, the only thing anyone really wants in life: someone to hold your hand when you die.

You are unhappy because you believe in such a thing as happy.

We were in dialogue that was about something other than what we were saying.

This was my modest dream come true: unambitious flight. The kind that never even got high enough for a view.

It was part of being a girl in the '60s that you were creative.