I feel that the world needs writers. We need to know what's really going on.

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

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.

Remember that writing is translation, and the opus to be translated is yourself.

If there is a god, I think he has a sense of humour. He does not require human beings to protect him from satire.

Photography is still a very new medium and everything must be tried and dare.

It's not the medium, but the quality of perception and expression, that determines the significance of art.

I was a young man with uninformed ideas. I threw out queries, suggestions, wondering all the time over everything; and to my astonishment the ideas took like wildfire. People made a religion of them.

There's a death sentence for your Robin of Locksley.

God is weaving His tapestry according to his own grand design. All flesh is in His hands. We have no need to fear. We have no need to worry. Our imperative need is to be found doing our duty.

Sameness is the mother of disgust, variety the cure.

I am close friends with Marina Abamovich, so I love strong, very aggressive political art. She is like a mom who wants to adopt me.

In economics, you always want to ask 'And then what?'