The romantic treatment of death asserts that people were made singular, made more interesting, by their illnesses.

What I really wanted was every kind of life, and the writer’s life seemed the most inclusive.

To paraphrase several sages: Nobody can think and hit someone at the same time.

Most men experience getting older with regret, apprehension. But most women experience it even more painfully: with shame. Aging is a man's destiny, something that must happen because he is a human being. For a woman, aging is not only her destiny . . . it is also her vulnerability.

Illnesses have always been used as metaphors to enliven charges that a society was corrupt or unjust.

Reading usually precedes writing. And the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer.

10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and the remaining 80 percent can be moved in either direction.