"I don't know what psychotherapy does. I have been seeing the same person for 26 years now."

"Writers can write outside their ethnicity or sex depending how open and vulnerable they wish to be."

"I used to get criticized for putting food in novels."

"The fact is, the media never gets off the interstate unless there's a major explosion."

"Because most writers have totally unrealistic concepts of how publishing works."

"Writing as a woman presents enormous problems but I have attempted it several times and haven't had many complaints."

"I enjoy about 1 out of 100 movies, it's about the same proportion to books published that I care to read."

"I asked a French critic a couple of years ago why my books did so well in France. He said it was because in my novels people both act and think. I got a kick out of that."

"I got $30 from Nation magazine for a poem and $500 for my first book of poems."

"I couldn't run a tight schedule, and if you're any good at teaching, you get sucked dry because you like your students and you're trying to help them, but you don't have any time left to write yourself."

"Michigan is two radically different places - the North and the South which makes for good drama and contrast."

"I rarely read or buy a book because of a review."

"I write novellas because I don't like loose sprawling prose."

"Some people hear their own inner voices with great clearness. And they live by what they hear. Such people become crazy... or they become legend."

"I thought, frankly, that it would be more pleasant to write a memoir than it was."

"After a lifetime of world travel I've been fascinated that those in the third world don't have the same perception of reality that we do."

"So when I made some money, I didn't have any idea how one handled such a situation because no one in our family ever had any money."

"The old fun thing is when somebody typed up the first chapter of War and Peace. And then made a precis of the rest of it and sent it out and only one publisher recognized it."

"Your kids inevitably want to move where they had their vacations when they were younger."

"The trajectory started when I was on the roof of our house looking out at a swamp when I was 19. I had written for several years, starting at about 15, but that day on the roof I took my vows and acknowledged my calling."

"The only advice I can give to aspiring writers is don't do it unless you're willing to give your whole life to it. Red wine and garlic also helps."

"I'm actually forced to write about Michigan because as a native of that state it's the place I know best."

"I do have trouble with titles."

"I should add that I very much enjoy certain cities especially Paris, New York and Chicago."

"I don't see gender as the most significant fact of human existence."

"Success and money can really be quite blinding."

"There is a neurologist, a woman over at Harvard who wanted me to come talk to them, and in France I have a lot of readers in the sciences. I can't tell you why."

"Everybody has a gun in their car in Detroit."

"Naturally we would prefer seven epiphanies a day and an earth not so apparently devoid of angels."

"I see more genuine sociability between the races in Mississippi than I see in Michigan. No question."

"Yeah, but now suddenly - you know, universities are notoriously market oriented, too."