I have always loved to use fear, to take it and comprehend it and make it work and consolidate a situation where I was afraid and take it whole and work from there.

I never was a person who wanted a handout. I was a cafeteria worker. I'm not too proud to ask the Best Western manager to give me a job. I have cleaned homes.

I very much dislike writing about myself or my work, and when pressed for autobiographical material can only give a bare chronological outline which contains no pertinent facts.

Now, I have nothing against the public school system as it is presently organized, once you allow the humor of its basic assumption about how it is possible to teach things to children....

In the study she nodded to my husband, turned completely around once, and then remarked that we seemed to be making no practical use of the space in our house. “This room would be much larger,” she said, “if you took out all those books.” Mrs. Ferrier thought the master bedroom should have faced west, and she barely put her head inside the smaller bedrooms. “They would be much larger,” I told her, “if we took out the beds.” Mrs. Ferrier fixed me with her cold eye. “If you took out the beds where would you sleep?” she wanted to know, and I followed her meekly downstairs.