Fear presides over these memories, a perpetual fear.Of course no childhood is without its terrors, yet I wonder if I would have been a less frightened boy if Lindbergh hadn't been president or if I hadn't been the offspring of Jews.

I kept waiting for him to lay bare something more than this pointed unobjectionableness, but all that rose to the surface was more surface

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.

Just like those who are incurably ill, the aged know everything about their dying except exactly when.

I came to New York and in only hours, New York did what it does to people: awakened the possibilities. Hope breaks out.

Everybody has a hard job. All real work is hard. My work happened also to be undoable. Morning after morning for 50 years, I faced the next page defenseless and unprepared. Writing for me was a feat of self-preservation. If I did not do it, I would die. So I did it. Obstinacy, not talent, saved my life.

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