You do the best you can and you deal with the consequences. It's all there is.

Teaching is too strong a word for whatever it was I did at Northeastern University

I think at this stage in my life I have learned that there are any number of things that men will never know, and can never hope to know, about women.

I had achieved the most important things in my life when I married Joan and had the sons. Given the choice between Joan and the boys, and being a writer, I world give up being a writer without a blink.

Fourteen years in the professor dodge has taught me that one can argue ingeniously on behalf of any theory, applied to any piece of literature. This is rarely harmful, because normally no-one reads such essays.

If you are going to live life on your own terms, there need to be terms, and somehow you need to live up to them.

There can never be any substitute for your own palate nor any better education than tasting the wine yourself.