During my sessions with Dr. Morse, I concluded that somebody had been messing with my head during those early years and they left footprints on my brain. I have spent almost as much time on Seventh-Day Adventists in my analysis as I have on my mother. I am willing to bet that this place was responsible for many of my hang-ups.

Americans are just beginning to regard food the way the French always have. Dinner is not what you do in the evening before something else. Dinner is the evening.

Writers are funny about reviews: when they get a good one they ignore it — but when they get a bad review they never forget it. Every writer I know is the same way: you get a hundred good reviews, and one bad, andyou remember only the bad. For years, you go on and fantasize about the reviewer who didn't like your book; you imagine him as a jerk, a wife-beater, a real ogre. And, in the meantime, the reviewer has forgotten all about the whole thing. But, twenty years later, the writer still remembers that one bad review.