We are made to persist. that's how we find out who we are.

Had he learned nothing from all those years of teaching Hawthorne? Through story after story he'd led his boys to consider the folly of obsession with purity - its roots sunk deep in pride, flowering condemnation and violence against others and self.

A piece of writing is a dangerous thing," he said. "It can change your life.

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.

One of the last courses I taught was on the Russian short story, which I love.

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.

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