Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.

Why is it we want so badly to memorialize ourselves? Even while we're still alive. We wish to assert our existence, like dogs peeing on fire hydrants.

In the First World War, people would be receiving letters from loved ones who had been dead for weeks, and they would not know until that black-bordered telegram arrived. I remember, of course, when it was letters only, or the telephone, and you did not make expensive long-distance calls unless it was, "Come home to the funeral," or the like.

No male writer is likely to be asked to sit on a panel addressing itself to the special problems of a male writer.

Victorian literature was my subject at Harvard.

If I love you, is that a fact or a weapon?

I grew up with the biologists. I know how they think.