Fearlessness in those without power is maddening to those who have it.

To be a writer you need to see things as they are, and to see things as they are you need a certain basic innocence.

One of the things that draws writers to writing is that they can get things right that they got wrong in real life by writing about them.

You felt it as a depth of ease in certain boys, their innate, affable assurance that they would not have to struggle for a place in the world; that is already reserved for them.

We even talked like Hemingway characters, though in travesty, as if to deny our discipleship: That is your bed, and it is a good bed, and you must make it and you must make it well. Or: Today is the day of the meatloaf. The meatloaf is swell. It is swell but when it is gone the not-having meatloaf will be tragic and the meatloaf man will not come anymore.

Because I don't have to be careful of people's feelings when I teach literature, and I do when I'm teaching writing.

But as my brother was doing his research for a book about my father, it became his opinion that the most influential anti-semitism my father encountered when he was growing up was from Jews, because his relatives were German Jews, and doctors.