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

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" When people ask what I write about, that's what I tell them: 'The drama of human relationships.' I'm not even close to running out of material. "

" I believe every one of us possesses a fundamental right to tell our own story. "

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

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

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" 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. "

" Teach a child to play solitaire, and she'll be able to entertain herself when there's no one around. Teach her tennis, and she'll know what to do when she's on a court. But raise her to feel comfortable in nature, and the whole planet is her home. "

" I believed my story would be helpful to young women my daughter's age, who are still in the process of forming themselves as women, and in need of encouragement to remain true to themselves. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" The portrait of my parents is a complicated one, but lovingly drawn. "

" 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? "

" I continued to protect him with my silence. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" It troubles me that people speak about writing for money as ugly and distasteful. "

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

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" 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. "

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" 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? "