What I have in mind when I start to write could fit inside an acorn-an acorn, moreover, that rarely if ever grows into an oak. Write fiction and you relinquish reason. You start with an acorn and you end up with a mackerel.

I think you're a wonder. You're beautiful. You're mature. You are, I admit, vastly more experienced than I am. That's what threw me. I was thrown. Forgive me.

I have a slogan I use when I get anxious writing, which happens quite a bit: ‘the ordeal is part of the commitment.’ It’s one of my mantras. It makes a lot of things doable.

You can no more make someone tell the truth than you can force someone to love you.

A Jewish man with his parents alive is half the time a helpless infant!

What I would really love to happen to me would be if I came upon an idea that would keep me busy until I die so I wouldn't have to go through the business of thinking up a new book. But I wouldn't mind writing a long book which is going to occupy me for the rest of my life.

It's the little questions from women about tappets that finally push men over the edge.