Notable American Women is a weird nougat of a book that suggests Coetzee, Kafka, Beckett, Barthelme, O'Brien, Orwell, Paley, Borges-and none of them exactly. Finally you just have to chew it for its own private juice.

Life is a sandwich of activity between two periods of bed-wetting.

I don't know any more about America than one knows being trapped in it.

If I tell you that I have robbed a bank, prepare the correct reaction.

Have you come over time to think that you know more now than you did when you were young, know less now than when young, know now there is so much more to know than you knew there was to know when young that it is moot whether you think you knew more then than now or less, or do you now know that you never knew anything at all and never will and only the bluster of youth persuaded you that you did or would?

Writing books is a nice retreat. There's nothing quite like diving into a book for a few hours. That is a big time vacation.

I knew I was supposed to be a writer; I had made that declaration in the closet of my soul.