Maybe being oneself is an acquired taste. For a writer it's a big deal to bow--or kneel or get knocked down--to the fact that you are going to write your own books and not somebody else's. Not even those books of the somebody else you thought it was your express business to spruce yourself up to be.

I don't write about what I know: I write in order to find out what I know.

In memory each of us is an artist: each of us creates.

Silence was the first prayer I learned to trust.

It is hard to sever the cords that tie us to our slavery and leave intact those that bind us to ourselves.

What is remembered is what becomes reality.

A peculiarity of the American historical sensibility allows us to be proud of great-grandfathers (or even grandfathers) who lived in crushing poverty, while the poverty of a father is too close for comfort.