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

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

There's a joy in writing short stories, a wonderful sense of reward when you pull certain things off.

Memory is funny. Once you hit a vein the problem is not how to remember but how to control the flow.

One can imagine a world without essays. It would be a little poorer, of course, like a world without chess, but one could live in it.

Like so many writers I started writing stories because I didn't have much time for anything else.

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.