Notable Quote
December 3, 2007
- I went into the Navy as Lawrence Ferling. Took part in D-Day and after the war I attended the Sorbonne on the G.I. Bill. ... Lots of guys did it. Spent four years in Paris, painting and translating poetry. And landed in San Francisco in 1950 with a sea bag over my shoulder. I liked the city; it had this insular feeling, like Naples. People there are Neapolitans first and Italians second. I came ...
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December 3, 2007
- I ... consider myself just one in a long line of jealous literary hacks.
–Me, quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle, March 28th, 2002
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December 3, 2007
- It is unusual, this book [The Moor's Last Sigh], in that it represents the first time I have managed to end a book exactly where I thought I would end it. This time I was absolutely certain of the final note, which was very freeing because it meant I could fool around as much as I wanted and compose this great arc of a novel as long as I never lost sight of the fact that I had to go ...
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December 3, 2007
- I am convinced that courage is the most important of all the virtues. Because without courage, you cannot practice any other virtues consistently. You can be kind for a while; you can be generous for a while; you can be just for a while, or merciful for a while, even loving for a while. But it is only with courage that you can be persistently and insistently kind and generous and fair.
–Me, ...
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December 3, 2007
- I started out with a single sentence. Which was, ‘He’d killed one man and possibly a second and had told Lyndon Johnson he was a coward after paying two thousand dollars to meet him.’ That was the voice: He had chutzpah and was a capitalist but also an anti-capitalist. A guy who had marched to the top but had some semblance of social conscience.
–Me, on Carry Me Across the Water, ...
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December 3, 2007
- Very few Americans realize that there is deep bias against mothers in this country and that we are undermining family's ability to care for children. We have launched a new blog that is crossposted at The Huffinton Post. It is about consciousness raising and culture change. I began to understand this a few years ago when I learned that equal pay for equal work is just as big a problem today as it ...
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December 3, 2007
- My way of writing is that I always have to be exploring. I'm always going into new territory. To just look back and try to remember what the old words were, it just would not be right.
–Me, quoted on Powells.com, December 3rd, 2003
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December 3, 2007
- I write in the very early hours of the morning. Typically I get up at around 4 a.m., have cereal, read the San Francisco Chronicle, and heat up some black coffee. Then I head to our basement, where my writing den is located. I write for the next two to three hours (I pace quite a bit), before I call it a day and get ready to go to my other job (I am an internist and have been in medical practice ...
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December 3, 2007
- Good books don’t answer questions, but they give us questions to enjoy for a long time.
–Me, quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle, June 26th, 2006
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December 3, 2007
- There’s still a little part of me that takes delight in shaking things up. There’s an inner child, a bad girl that wants to get out and have a good time.
–Me, quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle, September 9th, 2007
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