A room containing Philip Roth, I have noticed, begins hilariously to whirl and pulse with a mix of rebelliousness and constriction that I take to be Oedipal.
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.