1/ 談論先輩死去和自己得癌都是因為性生活不足。
I heard her say to several people that the recent deaths of Lionel Trilling and Hannah Arendt had left her feeling "orphaned." Fierce indignation as she reported someone saying of Trilling that it was no wonder he'd gotten cancer since he probably hadn't fucked his wife in years. ("And this was an academic speaking.") She hated to admit it, but she bravely did: one of her own first thoughts when she'd been told she had cancer was "Did I not have enough sex?"
2/ 覺得童年就像坐牢。
3/ 17歲時嫁給28歲的教授，婚姻持續七年。
4/ Susan 在考慮後認為只能稱讚 Joseph Brodsky。然而他批評她並不客氣。知道她最想做的是小說家而不是評論家，Brodsky 說：寫小說就像唱歌 - 不是每個人都會唱歌。而她非常想唱歌卻唱不好。小說晚年得獎，領獎後哭得不能自己。
5/ 熱愛美麗的肉體、城市，不喜歡自然景觀。
What sort of inspiration was to be found in the country? Had I never read Plato? (Socrates to Phaedrus: "I'm a lover of learning, and trees and open country won't teach me anything.")
I never knew anyone who was more appreciative than Susan was of the beautiful in art and in human physical appearance - "I'm a beauty freak" was something she said all the time - and yet I never knew anyone less moved by the beauties of nature. To her, it could not have been more obvious: art was superior to nature as the city was superior to the country. Why would anyone want to leave Manhattan - "capital of the twentieth century," as she loved to say - for a month in the woods.
6/ Hate squeamishness of people
7/ 寫作時用安非他命、右旋（安非他命）一口氣寫完。每天晚上都要出門，無法忍受孤單，什麼都要人陪著一起做。晚上回來後輕聲敲兒子的門坐在床旁邊的沙發聊晚上的事。
8/ 不化妝，後來才染髮（把白髮染黑，而不是把前額那戳染白）咬指甲。穿褲子，很少穿裙裝。擦男性香水，Dior Homme.
9/ She said, "Here's a big difference between you and me. You wear makeup and you dress in a certain way that's meant to draw attention and help people find you attractive. But I won't do anything to draw attention to my books. If someone wants to, they can take a closer look and maybe they'll discover I'm attractive. But I'm not going to do anything to help them." Mine was the typical female way, hers was the way of most men.
10/ 用詞誇張
Much has been made - not least by Susan herself - of her "morbid" (her word) obsession with beauty. But it should be said that her taste in physical beauty, like her taste in most other things, was very broad. She saw beauty in all types, and in many men and women whom others did not find remarkable at all. If a person had even one striking feature - a good body, for example, or big blue eyes - that person was "to die for." How was one to take, for example, her account of the people she had observed in North Vietnam, where "every other person looked like a movie star"? I saw it as part of her habit of exaggeration: every work of art she liked was a masterpiece every artist who moved her was a genius, every man or woman who acted bravely was a hero, and around every corner came Helen or Adonis.
11/ 容易感受到性吸引力，於是時常和朋友睡覺
Susceptible is the word that comes to me. She was susceptible. "If I'm close to someone, even if its' just a friend, I always feel some sexual attraction to that person." She often ended up sleeping with friends.
12/ 朋友帶妻子來對話就會變無聊
She was exasperated to find that the company of even very intelligent women was ususally not as interesting as that of intelligent men.
13/ 愛談戀愛
Susan was alone, and she did not want to be alone. She wanted to be in love. (She believed in love, and when she fell she fell hard, and in her feelings there was an element of terror.) She wanted to be married. It would torment her all her life that no relationship of hers, no matter how deeply and truly she cared for the other, had endured.
"Mean, smart men and silly women," she once said drolly, "seem to be my fate."
14/ 喜歡歐洲小說更勝美國
American Fiction is either passé suburban realism or Bloomingdale's nihilism.
15/ 寫作一定要朋友陪
"Other writers try not to use the same word twice in one paragraph. I don't like to use the same word twice on the same page." It was a boast - like her much-repeated "I care about every comma." But a more confident writer would not have been so anxiously strict about this, I thought. A more confident writer would not have been as addicted as she was to the thesaurus. Another thing she often depended on while writing was a pal, someone to sit and work with her during the many long hours it took to polish a draft. Sometimes that person would move into the apartment for days at a time, and the two of them would work together in Susan's room, discussing every idea, going over every line, every comma. I have never known any other writer to work like this, though the arrangement obviously helped Susan thrive, and she said she was always much happier when she was working with someone else than when she had to work alone. She hated doing anything alone, and if solitude was a necessity in a writer's life, she would, inasmuch as she could, find ways of getting around it.
16/ 認為工作就是羞辱
Susan had never wanted to be anyone's employee. The worst part of teaching was that it was, inescapably, a job, and for her to take any job was humiliating. But then, she also found the idea of borrowing a book from the library instead of buying her own copy humiliating. Take public transportation instead of a cab was deeply humiliating. "When I moved to New York" - at twenty-six, in 1959 - "I promised myself, no matter how poor I was, I would never do it." Stoop to it, her tone said. Divaism? She seemed to think any self-respecting person would understand and feel as she did.
17/ 她們相遇時她還沒有什麼傢俱，活得像碩士生。然而55歲後搬到 Chelsea 頂樓公寓、穿設計師服裝。反問 Sigrid：你怎麼還活得像碩士生。
18/ 一起床就要敲別人的門，讀報聊天。對兒子控制慾望強烈，去哪裡都要跟（Big Sur trip）作者在外面聽了不少 Susan 和 David 亂倫的傳言。就是這種程度的不可分離。晚年 Susan 的心理顧問才說她是把 David 當爸而不是兒子。
Elizabeth Hardwick
Nicole Stéphane
Maria Irene Fornés
Philip Rieff
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