The only privilege literature deserves - and this privilege it requires in order to exist - is the privilege of being in the arena of discourse, the place where the struggle of our languages can be acted out.

I don't read my books, I write them. Once I've finished the many years it usually takes me to write them, I can't bear to read them, because I've spent too long with them already. I'm not advertising them very well, am I?

It just requires so much of you, and most of the time you feel dumb.

Doubt, it seems to me, is the central condition of a human being in the twentieth century.

It's true that the human body is more vulnerable than the products of the human mind.

History could claw upward as well as down. The powerful could be deafened by the cries of the poor.

The difference between memoir and autobiography, as far as I see it, is that a memoir is there primarily to tell one particular story, whereas an autobiography tries to be a full account of a life.