Biography

Was considered by many to be a front-runner for the 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature, along with Margaret Atwood and poet Adonis. The prize ultimately went to playwright Harold Pinter.

Frequent contributor to "Playboy" magazine.

She is a creative writing professor at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey.

Her father was of English and German descent. Her mother's family was Hungarian.

She was awarded the 2010 National Humanities Medal for her contributions to American letters. The author of more than 50 novels, as well as short stories, poetry and nonfiction, she has been honored with the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in the art of short story.

[on having children] No, I don't think so, but then I was never strongly maternal. My brother also doesn't have children, it could be genetic, but it could be that I was so very interested in writing that I just didn't have time, although I do like children. My role models were childless: Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, George Eliot, the Brontës.

I'm drawn to failure. I feel like I'm contending with it constantly in my own life.

I am concerned with only one thing, the moral and social conditions of my generation.

[on not having an assistant] No, I'm too shy to hire anyone. I couldn't bear the thought of it. I remember Margaret Drabble saying that it was really hard for her to hire a cleaning woman because it seemed like hiring her own mother. We're from a background where we did the cleaning ourselves.

[on self-respect] We inhabit ourselves without valuing ourselves, unable to see that here, now, this very moment is sacred; but once it's gone--its value is incontestable.