Don't ask me how I am,' I blurt. 'Please.' I want to keep feeling good. Just because the lights are on doesn't mean I have to look.

That's how you know you really trust someone, I think; when you don't have to talk all the time to make sure they still like you or prove that you have interesting stuff to say.

When the reader and one narrator know something the other narrator does not, the opportunities for suspense and plot development and the shifting of reader sympathies get really interesting.

The kind of life I want is to be a person who would get a personal note every day.

Try a little tenderness.

I remember being in high school and listening to Vivaldi's 'Winter' and being so overwhelmed with emotion.

It makes me think of Lazarus. He must have had those shadows after his miracle. You don't spend time in the tomb without it changing you, and everyone who was waiting for you to come out.

I had them all fooled into believing I was normal and well-adjusted, a rock of sensibility who could always be counted on to have a positive attitude.

Life was mostly made up of things you couldn’t control, full of surprises, and they weren’t always good. Life wasn’t what you made it. You were what life made you.

Because love, love is never finished. It circles and circles, the memories out of order and not always complete.

When the remembering was done, the forgetting could begin.

Let them hate me, provided they respect my conduct.

Clearly the work of a master teacher who has deep knowledge of his subject and enormous empathy for his students and his readers.

Laughter is eternity if joy is real.

I would love a robot butler.

There are about five or six songs that were written in full or in part while I was in Iraq, and that was definitely a life-changing experience. There was no shortage of inspiration.

Don't take your toys inside just because it's raining.

Getting older, you just don't want to sing fluffy.

I might accept immortality, if I had to do it. But I would prefer - if there is any afterlife - to know nothing whatever about Borges, about his experiences in this world.

Consistency is the hallmark of the unimaginative.

Sexual fidelity is more important in a homosexual relationship than in any other. In other relationships there are a variety of ties. But here, fidelity is the only bond.