In today's world, it never looks good when you're suing somebody who earned $20,000 for writing a book over a period of a year or two.

What makes a publishing house great? The easy answer is the consistency with which it produces books of value over a lengthy period of time.

You have to surrender to a book. If you do, when something in it seems to be going askew, you are wounded. The more you have surrendered to a book, the more jarring its errors appear.

For me, the real pleasure in writing is in having an excuse to pursue my curiosity about people who have meant something to me.

It's often the case that the most strained moments in books are the very beginning and the very end - the getting in and the getting out. The ending, especially: it's awkward, as if the writer doesn't know when the book is over and nervously says it all again.

Young women today, as in the fifties, find themselves entering the big world and having to make choices.