Do parents sit down and tell their kids everything? I don't know. I don't know. I've convinced myself - I hope I'm right - that children despair of you if you don't tell them the truth.

You know who my gods are, who I believe in fervently? Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson - she's probably the top - Mozart, Shakespeare, Keats. These are wonderful gods who have gotten me through the narrow straits of life.

I think people should be given a test much like driver's tests as to whether they're capable of being parents!

We're animals. We're violent. We're criminal. We're not so far away from the gorillas and the apes, those beautiful creatures.

I was a very sickly child. My parents were immigrants. They were not decorous. They were not discreet. They always thought I was gonna die.

My life in Brooklyn was in constant danger because of my bad health.

Children surviving childhood is my obsessive theme and my life's concern.