I didn't choose anonymity.Instead, I chose absence.

The rules say that to tell a story you need first of all a measuring stick, a calendar, you have to calculate how much time has passed between you and the facts, the emotions to be narrated.

The circle of an empty day is brutal and at night it tightens around your neck like a noose

I believe that books, once they are written, have no need of their authors.

It's the people who love us or hate us - or both - who hold together the thousands of fragments we are made of.

Existence is this, I thought, a start of joy, a stab of pain, an intense pleasure, veins that pulse under the skin, there is no other truth to tell.

I think our sexuality is all yet to be recounted and that the rich male literary tradition constitutes a huge obstacle.

I don't have any special passion for politics, it being a never-ending merry-go-round of bosses big and small, all generally mediocre. I actually find it boring.

In order not to cut out a large part of one's private life, the creative work should not swallow up every other form of self-expression. But that is the most complicated thing.

I have always paid careful attention to social and economic conflicts, to the dialectic - if we can call it that - between high and low. Maybe it's because I was not born or brought up in affluence.

I am the queen of spades, I am the wasp that stings, I am the dark serpent. I am the invulnerable animal who passes through fire and is not burned.

It was because a great-looking man with no apparent mental defects found her attractive. Imagine feeling so buoyant over something so juvenile.

Selling high or low doesn't mean anything. It has to do purely with the market.

Music will always be a part of my life. I love music and I don't care how many units I sell.

I just hated to lose.

I think Nashville could use some better shopping!

I would love to have my own shoe line. That I would absolutely love.

But from each crime are born bullets that will one day seek out in you where the heart lies.

There's a good sense of fun and lack of sarcasm in the Texans, maybe a little earnestness which is kind of why I found it quite Australian.

Hard as it may appear in individual instances , dependent poverty ought to be held disgraceful.

There are big ships and small ships. But the best ship of all is friendship.