I love Shillington not as one loves Capri or New York, because they are special, but as one loves one's own body and consciousness, because they are synonymous with being.
Being able to write becomes a kind of shield, a way of hiding, a way of too instantly transforming pain into honey.
What interests me is why men think of women as witches. It's because they're so fascinating and exasperating, so other.
Perhaps I have written fiction because everything unambiguously expressed seems somehow crass to me; and when the subject is myself, I want to jeer and weep.
Belief, like love, must be voluntary.
New York, like the Soviet Union, has this universal usefulness: It makes you glad you live elsewhere.
