Having a book is somewhat like having a baby, as many woman writers have observed before me: the conception, the long preparation, the wait, the grow…

- Doris Grumbach

My old friend, water, my good companion, my beloved mother and father: I am its most natural offspring.

- Doris Grumbach

Talk uses up ideas. Once I have spoken them aloud, they are lost to me, dissipated into the noisy air like smoke. Only if I bury them, like bulbs, in…

- Doris Grumbach

What others regard as retreat from them or rejection of them is not those things at all but instead a breeding ground for greater friendship, a cultu…

- Doris Grumbach

These short stories establish Sontag's originality . . . her unique vision, her success with experiments in the form . . . Sontag makes a wonderful s…

- Doris Grumbach

Searching for the self when I was entirely alone was hazardous. What if I found not so much a great emptiness as a space full of unpleasant contents,…

- Doris Grumbach

Praise requires constant renewal and expansion.

- Doris Grumbach

Writers are entirely egocentric. To them, few things in their lives have meaning or importance unless they give promise of serving some creative purp…

- Doris Grumbach

My eyes glaze over at a writer solving tiny problems.

- Doris Grumbach