All the people we loved, who have died, are still alive in the past. The only thing that really separates us is time. It's a matter of perspective. That's what separates optimism and pessimism.

He made her think of ruins, of mysterious places in shadow and darkness, of storms and torrents of rain.

It's such a silly little thing, the heart.

You wake up in this here world, my sweet li'l mister, you got to wake up tough. You go out that front door tough of a mornin' and you stay tough 'til lights out—have you learned that?

I think my very earliest stories were all intellectual exercises and I was writing from experiences I had never had about characters who were about an inch deep.

I don't think you can guess what people will really like. You have to come at it from a more natural place and then kind of hope that your taste is shared by enough people to keep going.

I like people like Tina Turner, Chrissie Hynde, Debbie Harry, and Stevie Nicks; you only hear that person in their voice, they sound like nobody else.

Don’t try to be anything but yourself, and find success as yourself. Otherwise, you won’t be happy.

I'm from Spain, and in Spain, things in the '80s after the dictatorship, it was like a big explosion of freedom.

Ballet is the fairies' baseball.

So I don't think I'm gonna pull my head into my shell just because a bunch of people start acting like idiots.

I am unpacking my library. Yes I am. The books are not yet on the shelves, not yet touched by the mild boredom of order.