It's because you're always fighting sentiment. You're fighting sentimentality all of the time because being a mother alerts you in such a primal way.

We buy balloons, we let them go.

I have to return some videotapes

The better you look, the more you see.

Writing a novel is not method acting and I find it easy to step out of it at cocktail hour.

No one ever likes the right person.

Is evil something you are? Or is it something you do?

Why was I holding on to something that would never be mine? But isn't that what people do?

But this was what happened when you didn't want to visit and confront the past: the past starts visiting and confronting you.

I like the idea of a writer being haunted by his own creation, especially if the writer resents the way the character defines him.

And as the elevator descents, passing the second floor, and the first floor, going even father down, I realize that the money doesn't matter. That all that does is that I want to see the worst

When the world becomes peaceful for the birds, the birds will sing a harmonious chorale

You'll never see us coming.

I desire to know wherefore I am banished?

Constant companionship is not enjoyable, any more than constant eating. We sit too long at the table of friendship, when we outsit our appetites for each other's thoughts.

We should try to bring to any power what we have as women. We will destroy it all if we try to imitate that absolutely unfeeling, driving ambition that we have seen coming at us across the desk.

I never even realized I was Jewish until I was practically grown up. Or rather, I used to feel that everybody in the world was Jewish, which amounts to the same thing.

I hope all you young girls see yourself up there... we were just like you.

That feeling of hopelessness only serves your masters.

When a house is tottering to its fall, The strain lies heaviest on the weakest part, One tiny crack throughout the structure spreads, And its own weight soon brings it toppling down.

It's not that I'm a Type-B personality. It's that I'm driven by a passionate, all-consuming desire to take it easy.