I often worry that my idea of personhood is nostalgic, irrational, inaccurate.

You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality.

As far as I'm concerned, if you want to find out about the last day of WWII or the roots of the Indian Mutiny, get thee to a books catalogue.

The past is always tense, the future perfect.

Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.

Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.

Time is how you spend your love.

I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.

Don't confuse honours with achievement.

Pulchritude--beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection.

Gem, there is an exception to every rule and we are going to be it. I'm not losing you.

What men classify as living is often but the discontentment of making oneself itch just to enjoy the scratch.

I spend most of my time in a room alone where eight hours go by, and I have no sense of time. I work seven days a week, and I live in this sort of vague subconscious fog a lot.

I have the insecurities of any actress, I suppose of any woman. Even the most beautiful ones feel unhappy. Look at Bardot: she was suicidal. But I like to play with the camera. I like to ham it up.

Sincerity and truth are the basis of every virtue.

Number one: Don't frisk me. Don't hurt me physically. Don't get anywhere near my neck. And don't call me Regis.

As long as it's a world, it has laws. Why, I don't know, it's just the way it is. In Nirvana, there are no laws.

Do you even know who I am? Seriously, tell me, because I don't.

Great sorrow makes sacred the sufferer.

True solitude is found in the wild places, where one is without human obligation. One's inner voices become audible... In consequence, one responds more clearly to other lives.