I'm a child in that respect: able to live, physically speaking, on a crumb of anticipation for weeks at a time, but always in danger of crushing the waited-for event with the freight of my excessive hope.

We are bound by the secrets we share.

It's hard to resist the magical thinking that the work habits of great writers are the key to their greatness.

When I tried to do something else, everyone behaved as if I was Gypsy Rose Lee trying to paint a Matisse.

When you live alone, your furnishings, your possessions, are always confronting you with the thinness of your existence.

It's always a disappointing business confronting my own reflection. My body isn't bad. It's a perfectly nice, serviceable body. It's just that the external me- the study, lightly wrinkled, handbagged me- does so little credit to the stuff that's inside.

I don't write books for people to be friends with the characters. If you want to find friends, go to a cocktail party.