The first person besides my mother who believed in me was a man whose last name I never knew. He was my boss, the manager of Swenson's Ice Cream shop.

We all - in the end - die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories.

Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at first but it becomes beautiful later.

Even as a feminist, my whole life I'd been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I'd thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother.

Everybody in America grew up without a father even if they had one. It was the fifties. They were working.

Often, I think, displaced people imagine themselves leading double lives. So a portion of my identity has always been privately siphoned into what would have been if I had stayed in Wisconsin.

Once upon a time, my mother lived in the posh downtown of Homs, Syria. She described my grandfather as a king in a storybook, atop a horse, wearing a didashah and pointing a long arm.

Reading-not occasionally, not only on vacation but everyday-gives me nourishment and enlarges my life in mysterious and essential ways.

So many things that seemed crucial and excruciatingly hard ended and then didn't matter anymore, forever after

We come into the world whole, all of us, but we don't know that, don't know that life will be taking large chunks out of us, forever.

Casebook is my attempt at a love story. I had a vision of a difficult love.

There are ships sailing to many ports, but not a single one goes where life is not painful.

Joblessness gives you the resource through which you can create a new you

Every day we make the whole world new... Or else grow old.

Drunkenness is temporary suicide: the happiness that it brings is merely negative a momentary cessation of unhappiness.

Never be the only one, except, possibly, in your own home.

If we took away women's right to vote, we'd never have to worry about another Democrat president.

Isn't that an odd philosophy for a vampire?

In man's struggle against the world, bet on the world.

I love being outside with trees and water, lying down somewhere or walking. I do transcendental meditation, which keeps me calm and steady.

A heaven on earth I have won by wooing thee.