I venture that those of us who are most serene when faced with the possibility of nothingness are the ones who've reached furthest to the downward and upward of their beings.

We write out of revenge against reality, to dream and enter the lives of others.

One learns much more by writing fiction, because the insights come from those deeper subconscious levels where the greater and more interesting truths lie.

Americans and their desire to be novelists, the American novel should be listed in medical dictionaries alongside Megalomania and Obsessional Neuroses.

Only friends will tell you the truths you need to hear to make your life bearable.

Why are there no great women artists?' sounds as ignorant of human geography as the query 'Why are there no Eskimo tennis teams?

I shall never cease to marvel at the way we beg for love and tyranny.

All our parents have levels of deviousness. We're driven to write about this discrepancy between the bright shining selves they invented and the monsters lurking underneath.

Art is both a vengeance against reality and a reconciliation with it.

As to why people like Joseph Lelyveld are writing memoirs, I think they're just catching on the coattails of the trend.

one forgives parents as naturally as one emancipates oneself from them - usually shortly afterward.

Happiness is not the absence of problems, it's the ability to deal with them.

The wealth of a soul is measured by how much it can feel... its poverty by how little.

Boys fall in love with what they see. Girls fall in love with what they hear. But both with inner eyes. And their inner ears.

His smile is like the silver plate on a coffin.

You get a sense of how the show works and then let your personality take over.

The devil's snare does not catch you, unless you are first caught by the devil's bait.

In any marginalized community, whether people identify themselves or not affects us all.

Magic has always been an element of Witchcraft, but in the Craft its techniques were practiced within a context of community and connection.

He loved books; books are cold but safe friends.

Very few people ever understand art. If you are lucky, they will buy it for the wrong reasons.