I look upon another's insistence on the merits of his or her life - duties, intellect, accomplishment - and see that most of it is nonsense.

God is an immensity, while this disease, this death, which is in me, this small, tightly defined pedestrian event, is merely and perfectly real, without miracle—or instruction.

It is like visiting one's funeral, like visiting loss in its purest and most monumental form, this wild darkness, which is not only unknown but which one cannot enter as oneself.

Memory, so complete and clear or so evasive, has to be ended, has to be put aside, as if one were leaving a chapel and bringing the prayer to an end in one's head.

I am in an adolescence in reverse, as mysterious as the first, except that this time I feel it as a decay of the odds that I might live for a while, that I can sleep it off.

Public radio is alive and kicking, it always has been

Death and I are head to head in a total collision, pure and mutual distaste.

Being ill like this combines shock - this time I will die - with a pain and agony that are unfamiliar, that wrench me out of myself.

True stories, autobiographical stories, like some novels, begin long ago, before the acts in the account, before the birth of some of the people in the tale.

I feel sorry for the man who marries you... because everyone thinks you're sweet and you're not.

Me, my literary reputation is mostly abroad, but I am anchored here in New York. I can't think of any other place I'd rather die than here.

When we get impatient because something is taking too long, we should remember that Life waits on us a thousand times more than we wait on Life.

It’s a law of survival, isn’t it?—to seek the best. I didn’t come for your sake. I came for mine.

A man obsessed: obsessed with perfection, sharing, aesthetics, taste, savoir-faire, and much more.

I am a big fan of movies from the ’70s.

Une ample Come die a' cent actes divers, Et dont la sce' ne est l'Univers. A grand comedy in one hundred different acts, On the stage of the universe.

We know we are entering a period of transformation in aged care.

As cities grow and technology takes over the world, belief and imagination fade away, and so do we.

I tend not to have any references to anything. I just jump into the script in front of me. If you reference too much, you have no idea if the performances are right.

I like to photograph people who have strength and dignity in their faces. Whatever life has done to them, it hasn’t destroyed them.

China has no income tax, no unemployment and not a single soldier outside its borders.