When midlist writers are treated like dirt, I would desist were I less stubborn and less committed.

The will to be totally rational is the will to be made out of glass and steel: and to use others as if they were glass and steel.

The incidence of violent brand-loyalty to one's own current dogma has risen.

I wasn't afraid of being poor; I rather took it for granted. I was good at getting by with very little. I couldn't imagine sacrificing my writing to anything else.

Writing is a futile attempt to preserve what disappears moment by moment.

Every Jewish holiday has a religious significance, a historical significance, and a relevance to the time of year in the natural calendar of the seasons and trees and growing things, as well as a personal significance. So you are always looking backward, outward, inward and forward.

I was a working class Jewish girl. In my girlhood, anti-Semitism was a daily fact of life in Detroit. I did not come from people who had many options in their lives or many choices open to them. I was a girl in a family in which women were, as in society at large, very much second-class citizens. I did not see why I should accept these forced limitations without a fight. Being free to make my own choices thus became very important to me at an early age.