These rejections hurt me terribly because I felt it was my life that was being rejected.

Biography can be the most middle-class of all forms, the judgment of little people avenging themselves on the great.

The most important things in our intimate lives can't be discussed with strangers, except in books.

I think that there are empty ecological niches in the literary landscape crying to be filled and when a book more or less fills a niche it's seized on, even when it's a far from perfect fit...

I think sincerity was my sole aesthetic and realism my experimental technique.

Paris... is a world meant for the walker alone, for only the pace of strolling can take in all the rich (if muted) detail.

As a young teenager I looked desperately for things to read that might excuse me or assure me I wasn't the only one, that might confirm an identity I was unhappily piecing together

Tennessee Williams recognized that great theater begins with great talkers, and that great talkers obey two rules: they never sound like anyone else and they never say anything directly.

If I take a less defensive tone, I'd admit that I couldn't write today a very jazzy, contemporary look at America as I did in 1979 in States of Desire.

Ive always seen writing as a way of telling the truth. For me, writing is about truth. I have always tried to be faithful to my own experience.

I didn't want to write a biographie romancee especially since I already write novels, nor did I want to challenge the rules of the biography game, arbitrary as those rules might be

How could one leap on the back of life and wring its scruff?

With organization comes empowerment.

She was so full of holes now, she was like a Swiss cheese.

Wearing a Democratic label no longer matches what I know about my country and its possibilities.

there is enough treachery , hatred violence absurdity in the average human being to supply any given army on any given day

We were very nervous at the start, we didn't play our game at all.

I'm going to be kind, because then it all just kind of spreads, and the world is a little nicer out there.

If you want to stay in the business then you've got to be a bit shrewd, haven't you?

Obviously because of my personal connection to Mandela and having had his story as part of my childhood, I knew how awesome he was.

I got that idea from being in India. I always like the chanting.