I am not a perfect friend, and it is impossible not to rebuff or be rebuffed if you move about the world.

A woman whose smile is open and whose expression is glad has a kind of beauty no matter what she wears.

Grief is in two parts. The first is loss. The second is the remaking of life.

Some people who think they are in unhappy marriages are just in unhappy bodies.

A person who has no secrets is a liar. We always fold ourselves away from others just enough to preserve a secret or two, something that we cannot share without destroying our inner landscape.

People always tell me either A. you love him. B. you hate him. My usual answer? C. All of the above.

I've told the same story twelve different ways, but I think that's just part of what writers do. Once may not be enough.

What other people think of me is not really my major concern in life. What other people think of what I write is another matter.

I have two writer daughters, and a psychoanalyst daughter, and a lawyer daughter, and they wish we didn't write, I'm sure, but we write. If we were a painting family, we would paint.

You really can't say things that upset someone in print and expect them to be nice and leave you their money. That's just not reasonable.

Reader, you forget that economics precedes religion; worship grew out of eating, not the other way around.

Charity erodes the cultural prerequisites for a vigorous democracy.

When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive knowledge.

Men are simpler than you imagine my sweet child. But what goes on in the twisted, tortuous minds of women would baffle anyone.

I am Fidel Castro and we have come to liberate Cuba.

Are you wrestling faster than the audience can process? The answer to that question is often times yes. If that is true, then you are failing.

The right circumstances sometimes happen of their own accord, slyly, without fanfare, without warning. Layman's alchemy. . . . The magic of everyday things.

In the great drama of existence we are audience and actors at the same time.

There are only twelve tones and they need to be treated carefully.

Nemo tam divos habuit faventes, Crastinum ut possit sibi polliceri. Nobody has ever found the gods so much his friends that he can promise himself another day.

All music does come from a time and place. I was born and raised in New York. I moved out of New York, but it's inside of me and it will be inside of me until they put me in a box in the ground.