“My mother had great executive-secretarial jobs in the advertising business and raised two boys during the Second World War. She used to say, “I make a man’s salary.” That’s heroism.”

“My father drank and was a bully. For the first five years of my brother’s life, my father beat him with a leather-heeled slipper. Had I been subjected to that kind of treatment, all bets are off. His absence saved my life.”

“I was in my mother’s belly as she sat in the waiting room of the abortionist’s office. Dr. Sunshine was his code name. I was fifty feet from the drainpipe, and she saw a painting on the wall that reminded her of her mother, who had recently died. She took that as a sign to have the baby. That’s what I call luck.”