Novelist Quotes

No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool. Writers, alas, have to be fools in public, while the rest of the human race can cover its tracks.

My generation was not only maligned in book reviews and attacked in graduate school but we lived to see our adored and adorable daughters wonder why feminism had become a dirty word.

It is the city of mirrors, the city of mirages, at once solid and liquid, at once air and stone.

I write lustily and humorously. It isn't calculated; it's the way I think. I've invented a writing style that expresses who I am.

I don't cook. My mother didn't cook. My daughter doesn't cook.

Fame means millions of people have the wrong idea of who you are.

Ambivalence is a wonderful tune to dance to. It has a rhythm all its own.

We all parent the best we can. Being human, we're ambivalent. We want perfection for our babies, but we also need sleep.

At certain historic moments, grandparents took on childrearing responsibilities. In many cultures, they still do. Chinese grandparents who are able to retire at 55 are seen all over Beijing bouncing grandbabies. In the United States, we can't afford to retire at 55.

Show me a woman who doesn't feel guilty and I'll show you a man.

Friends love misery, in fact. Sometimes, especially if we are too lucky or too successful or too pretty, our misery is the only thing that endears us to our friends.

You take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.

Men and women, women and men. It will never work.

Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy the Church. America Hollywood.

My grandchildren are fabulous and funny.

I have accepted fear as a part of life - specifically the fear of change... I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back.

Women are the only exploited group in history to have been idealized into powerlessness.

If you don't risk anything, you risk even more.

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.

And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.

Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.

Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed.

You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.

Jealousy is all the fun you think they had.

My feeling toward the animal is that he is our younger brother, and that we are our brother's keeper.

Women have the feeling that since they didn't make the rules, the rules have nothing to do with them.

Not having to own a car has made me realize what a waste of time the automobile is.

But novels are never about what they are about; that is, there is always deeper, or more general, significance. The author may not be aware of this till she is pretty far along with it.

A novel's whole pattern is rarely apparent at the outset of writing, or even at the end; that is when the writer finds out what a novel is about, and the job becomes one of understanding and deepening or sharpening what is already written. That is finding the theme.