My transition from wanting to be a cartoonist to wanting to be a writer may have come about through that friendly opposition, that even-handed pairing, of pictures and words.
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.
