Once upon a time, my mother lived in the posh downtown of Homs, Syria. She described my grandfather as a king in a storybook, atop a horse, wearing a didashah and pointing a long arm.

We all - in the end - die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories.

Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at first but it becomes beautiful later.

Even as a feminist, my whole life I'd been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I'd thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother.

Everybody in America grew up without a father even if they had one. It was the fifties. They were working.

Often, I think, displaced people imagine themselves leading double lives. So a portion of my identity has always been privately siphoned into what would have been if I had stayed in Wisconsin.

Reading-not occasionally, not only on vacation but everyday-gives me nourishment and enlarges my life in mysterious and essential ways.

So many things that seemed crucial and excruciatingly hard ended and then didn't matter anymore, forever after

We come into the world whole, all of us, but we don't know that, don't know that life will be taking large chunks out of us, forever.

The first person besides my mother who believed in me was a man whose last name I never knew. He was my boss, the manager of Swenson's Ice Cream shop.

Casebook is my attempt at a love story. I had a vision of a difficult love.

Seduction is merely encouraging a man to do something he already wants to do.

Think about peace, dream about peace, and take action to make the world peaceful.

My mathematics is simple: one plus one = one.

I'm in a monogamous relationship and very happy.

I'm basically an Upper West Side Jewish writer.

My son's always showing me pictures of dinosaurs and asking me what their names are. I dont know so I make stuff up: That son is a thesaurus.

The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.

An actual right is something that governments need merely to secure, not to implement.

There is no need of any competition with anybody. U R yourself, and as U R, U R perfectly good. Accept urself

Well: Love and Pain Be kinfolks twain; Yet would, Oh would I could Love again.