You have to really understand how people speak, and you have to reconstruct it... Most pleasure in writing, you know, is in inventing.

Sometimes before people know what they're saying, they already love the language.

I loved the comradeship of the sixties and the seventies, and I still maintain friendships with the people I worked with then - the ones that are still alive. That's one of the great gifts of our political movements, great friendships . . . and also a few enmities.

My family were Russian Jews. They got you to read as soon as you could. And then assumed you would read a lot. People didn't really tell stories but they were good talkers. That's important for a writer, to hear speakers.

Old age is not a good thing. It can be really hard, and those of us who have it a little easier should keep in mind that there are hundreds of thousands of people who are not as well off.