You have to be able to make a real creative life for Yourself, before you can expect anyone Else to provide one ready-made for you.

Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.

I love life. But it is hard and I have so much, so very much to learn.

I think if I had done anything else I would like to have been a doctor. This is the sort of polar opposition to being a writer, I suppose.

What I didn't say was that each time I picked up a German dictionary or a German book, the very sight of those dense, black, barbed-wire letters made my mind shut like a clam.

I am not cruel, only truthful.

A little thing, like children putting flowers in my hair, can fill up the widening cracks in my self-assurance like soothing lanolin.