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" I think of myself as a realistic writer, not a creator of soap opera or melodrama. "

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" A person who deserves my loyalty receives it. "

" If I told you about all the stories I don't tell, I would be violating the very boundaries I set for myself. "

" Those who rhapsodize about the ease and joy of childhood have perhaps forgotten what it's like to be 12 years old. "

" I was giving a speech one time, and the woman who introduced me said, 'Well, she used to be J. D. Salinger's girlfriend. I thought, 'God, is that all I've been?' I didn't want to be reduced to that. "

" My job is writing. I get paid to do it. When was the last time you heard someone challenge a doctor for making money off of cancer? "

" Many women my age have known the experience of giving up crucial parts of themselves to please the man they love. "

" The painter who feels obligated to depict his subjects as uniformly beautiful or handsome and without flaws will fall short of making art. "

" Not only did I avoid speaking of Salinger; I resisted thinking about him. I did not reread his letters to me. The experience had been too painful. "

" I compromised my ability to tell my story, at the most basic level. "

" I wonder what it is that the people who criticize me for telling this story truly object to: is it that I have dared to tell the story? Or that the story turns out not to be the one they wanted to hear? "

" I do not outline. There are writers I know and count as my friends who certainly do it the other way, but for me, part of the adventure is not knowing how it's going to turn out. "

" One life is not enough for me. I want to go lots of places. "

" I have long observed that the act of writing is viewed, by some, as an elite and otherworldly act, all the more so if a person isn't paid for what she writes. "

" If people choose to live their life in a way that does not confront the more troubling aspects of their experience, that's fine, if it works for them. But it will probably make them uncomfortable if they come up against somebody like me. So they just shouldn't! They shouldn't read my work! "

" Nothing like being visible, publishing one's work, and speaking openly about one's life, to disabuse the world of the illusion of one's perfection and purity. "

" Growing up in the fifties and sixties, I can only remember knowing one child, ever, whose parents got a divorce, and hardly any whose mother 'worked' at anything besides raising her children. "

" Women writers have been told, forever, that our stories were not valuable. Not as valuable as men's stories about wars, business, power. "

" The vehemence with which certain critics have chosen not simply to criticize what I've written, but to challenge my writing this story at all, speaks of what the book is about: fear of disapproval. "

" I continued to protect him with my silence. "

" It is not the task of a reader to please her subjects. "

" At Home in the World is the story of a young woman, raised in some difficult circumstances, and how she survives. It tells a story of redemption, not victimhood. "

" Long after Salinger sent me away, I continued to believe his standards and expectations were the best ones. "

" The big dramas that fascinate me are the quiet ones that happen behind closed doors in so-called ordinary families. "

" The silence was part of the story I wanted to tell. "

" The process of writing has always started for me when I put myself in a place where no one distracts me. "

" Some literary types subscribe to the notion that being a writer like Salinger entitles a person to remain free of the standards that might apply to mere mortals. "

" You write about what you know, and you write about what you want to know. "

" More than any other setting - more than battlefields or boardrooms or a spaceship headed for intergalactic travel - I'll put my money on the family to provide an endless source of comedy, tragedy and intrigue. "

" Although Salinger had long since cut me out of his life completely and made it plain that he had nothing but contempt for me, the thought of becoming the object of his wrath was more than I felt ready to take on. "

" If a man wishes to truly not be written about, he would do well not to write letters to 18-year-old girls, inviting them into his life. "