As writers and readers, as sinners and citizens, our realism and our aesthetic sense make us wary of crediting the positive note.
Positive defaults align our short-term decisions with our long-term interests. And we don't always do that.
I think it's important for one to take a certain distance from oneself.
A deranged person is supposed to have the strength of ten men. I have the strength of one small boy... with polio.
All I knew was that I was writing something out of my very guts, and that I was content.
Writing is part intuition and part trial and error, but mostly it's very hard work.
Many of my books have begun with the title, because naming a work already in progress makes no sense to me.
When I was a baby feminist, leading feminist thinkers were insisting that if women ran the world, there would be no sadism or war.
I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong.
Trying to force something is the best way to stop it from happening.
If nothing else, a house is a place to keep books in.
It was Disney World fused with Cancerland.
In silence the three of them looked at the sunset and thought about God.
Happiness doesn't depend on any external conditions, it is governed by our mental attitude.
Youngsters of the age of two and three are endowed with extraordinary strength. They can lift a dog twice their own weight and dump him into the bathtub.
What I think a psychic is, unfortunately, I think in this day and age, it's taken on sort of a rancid sound.
Increasingly, staying in the middle class - let alone aspiring to become middle class - is becoming a game of chance.
I can't really define it in sexual terms alone although our sexuality is so energizing why not enjoy it too?
The law was made for one thing alone, for the exploitation of those who don't understand it, or are prevented by naked misery from obeying it.
Happy and alone, you say? Reclusive and merry? How oxymoronic! Pas possible! Alas, the concept is lost on so many.
A man is never completely alone in this world. At the worst, he has the company of a boy, a youth, and by and by a grown man - the one he used to be.
