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.