The question to ask about the writer isn't 'Why does he behave so badly?' but 'What does he gain by wearing this mask?

The pleasure isn't in owning the person. The pleasure is this. Having another contender in the room with you.

To read a novel requires a certain kind of concentration, focus, devotion to the reading. If you read a novel in more than two weeks, you don't read the novel really.

For discipline is imposed not just on oneself but on those in one's orbit.

I write fiction and I'm told it's autobiography, I write autobiography and I'm told it's fiction, so since I'm so dim and they're so smart, let them decide what it is or it isn't.

A Jew without Jews, without Judaism, without Zionism, without Jewishness, without a temple or an army or even a pistol, a Jew clearly without a home, just the object itself, like a glass or an apple.

When I was a child... I was watching a snowstorm, and hopefully asked, 'Momma, do we believe in winter?'