I should say, one of the things about being a widow or a widower, you really, really need a sense of humor, because everything's going to fall apart.
We inhabit ourselves without valuing ourselves unable to see that here now this very moment is sacred but once it's gone-its value is incontestable.
It isn't the subjects we write about but the seriousness and subtlety of our expression that determines the worth of or effort.
Oh, it’s a terrible, cruel thing—first you’re young, and that takes up such a long time you think it’s forever, then suddenly you’re not young, and you never get used to it—and, oh dear, there’s just...
Her wish to die was as pervasive as a dial tone: you lift the receiver, it's always there.
Fiction that adds up, that suggests a logical consistency, or an explanation of some kind, is surely second-rate fiction; for the truth of life is its mystery.
Primarily, 'Black Girl/White Girl' is the story of two very different, yet somehow 'fated' girls; for Genna, her 'friendship' with Minette is the most haunting of her life, though it is one-sided and...
Among many of my friends and acquaintances, I seem to be one of the very few individuals who felt or feels no ambivalence about my mother. All my feelings for my mother were positive, very strong and...
P.J. said, That's true about any statement we make, isn't it? We never tell as much as we know.Right! So We're lying. So almost every statement is a lie, we can't help it.Yeah. But some statements are...
Our house was made of stone, stucco, and clapboard; the newer wings, designed by a big-city architect, had a good deal of glass, and looked out into the Valley, where on good days we could see for man...
Love is not enough to keep us from harm.
Like many shy people, once he began talking he seemed not to know how to stop; he lacked the social sleight of hand to change the subject, and he had no idea how to engage another person. Like a runaw...
I never change, I simply become more myself.
How crucial for us to rehearse the future, in words.Never to doubt that you will live to utter them.Never to doubt that you will tell .
How alone this was going to be.
As a farm girl, even when I was quite young, I had my 'farm chores' - but I had time also to be alone, to explore the fields, woods and creek side. And to read.
I think it's very important for writers and artists generally to be witnesses to the world, and to be transparent. To let other people speak... to travel... to experience the world. And memorialize it...
Critics sometimes appear to be addressing themselves to works other than those I remember writing.
Words are like wild birds - they will come when they wish, not when they are bidden.
There could be no romance in the terrible possibility that Gretel Nissenbaum had fled on foot, alone, not to her family but simply to escape from her life; in what exigency of need, what despondency o...