 Everybody has a gun in their car in Detroit. |
| Your kids inevitably want to move where they had their vacations when they were younger. |
| I should add that I very much enjoy certain cities especially Paris, New York and Chicago. |
| There is a neurologist, a woman over at Harvard who wanted me to come talk to them, and in France I have a lot of readers in the sciences. I can't tell you why. |
| I got $30 from Nation magazine for a poem and $500 for my first book of poems. |
| I see more genuine sociability between the races in Mississippi than I see in Michigan. No question. |
| I write novellas because I don't like loose sprawling prose. |
| After a lifetime of world travel I've been fascinated that those in the third world don't have the same perception of reality that we do. |
| Success and money can really be quite blinding. |
| Writing as a woman presents enormous problems but I have attempted it several times and haven't had many complaints. |
| I've never felt influenced by Ernest Hemingway though I suppose there is something inevitable there. |
| I'm not rational enough to be a good journalist. |
| The fact is, the media never gets off the interstate unless there's a major explosion. |
| I do have trouble with titles. |
| Yeah, but now suddenly - you know, universities are notoriously market oriented, too. |
| New Yorkers are mostly interested in New York - in case you haven't noticed. |
| I used to get criticized for putting food in novels. |
| I asked a French critic a couple of years ago why my books did so well in France. He said it was because in my novels people both act and think. I got a kick out of that. |
| The trajectory started when I was on the roof of our house looking out at a swamp when I was 19. I had written for several years, starting at about 15, but that day on the roof I took my vows and acknowledged my calling. |
| We are all naturally xenophobic. |
