One always writes comedy at the moment of deepest hysteria.

I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not.

This is unusual for me. I have given readings and not lectures. I have told people who ask for lectures that I have no lecture to give. And that is true.

The writer is all alone.

You can't deny what you've learned; you can't deny your travels; you can't deny the nature of your life.

One isn’t born one’s self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people’s ideas – and you have to work through it all.

But everything of value about me is in my books.