Freedom is a public library.

It was hard to reassure grown-ups when you weren't certain yourself what you were feeling and thinking—when thoughts dissolved before you could name them.

I don't know what makes a writer's voice. It's dozens of things. There are people who write who don't have it. They're tone-deaf, even though they're very fluent. It's an ability, like anything else, being a doctor or a veterinarian, or a musician.

My first job was working in a dress shop in Los Angeles in 1940, for $7 a week.

When I had a few francs, I spent them at a café on the Place de Longchamps, a block or so from my pension, where I could order a glass of Beaujolais and a plate of string beans in vinaigrette for the equivalent of fifteen cents.

People steal into one's consciousness and occupy what seems, in retrospect, to have been their place all along.

I like to cook; it is, for me, a happy combination of mindlessness and purpose.