Every writer is a writer of the generation before.

I rail against writers who talk about the loneliness of it all — what do they want, a crowd looking over their typewriters? Or those who talk about having to stare at a blank page — do they want someone to write on it?

I picked up the writing on the very day he died. It was the only consolation I could find.

The only reason I didn't kill myself after I read the reviews of my first book was because we have two rivers in New York and I couldn't decide which one to jumo into.

The spiritual life becomes very simple when you're sick.

Baseball fans are pedants, there is no other kind.

For Catholics before Vatican II, the land of the free was pre-eminently the land of Sister Says-except, of course, for Sister, for whom it was the land of Father Says.