Don’t portray yourself as who you want to be. Portray yourself as who you are.

Scars are stories, history written on the body

For me, writing is inseparable from thinking. I could say the entire undertaking is a vast cerebral construct against my demons. It's the thing that I love. It's my identity.

The dizzy rapture of starving. The power of needing nothing. By force of will I make myself the impossible sprite who lives on air, on water, on purity.

My days are as long as despair can make them.

I've always been interested in the intersection between our rational and our unconscious lives.

I can't work out much about myself or what I see in the world around me unless I do it through writing.

Writing is how I stay sane. It's completely necessary.

Sometimes there's a sort of tear in the veil, and there are people who live in more than one dimension.

There aren't many people in our history who have so completely surrendered themselves to a mission that they would give up their lives for it.

We're taught to expect unconditional love from our parents, but I think it is more the gift our children give us. It's they who love us helplessly, no matter what or who we are.

Adversity is the test of strength in every soul.

I like '50s and '60s American art. I have 85 or 90 Warhols.

The glorious Dryden, refiner and purifier of English verse, did less for rhyme than he did for metre.

God, through Jesus Christ, welcomes you anyhow.

A father is a fellow who has replaced the currency in his wallet with snapshots of his kids.

Too far-fetched to believe, too obvious to ignore.

Twenty years from now, will we listen to Lady Gaga? No. She might think she is making a stand for the freaks and the weirdos. But they're not going to have any decent music to play, are they?

I do not see how it is possible for an intelligent human being to conclude that the Song of Solomon is the work of God, and that the tragedy of Lear was the work of an uninspired man.

Because of my two films - one was about my half-sister (Kati with an I) and the next one featured my cousin (Fake It So Real) - I was hesitant to start with someone so close.

Talks with terror cannot happen, but talks on terror are desirable.