I want a book to contain a world - indeed the world. Writing is my main means of engagement with the world and I want the scars of that engagement to be left in the language.

When I look at my old pictures, all I can see is what I used to be but am no longer. I think: What I can see is what I am not.

Home is where somebody notices when you are no longer there.

The perfect borscht is what life should be but never is.

Belief and delusion are incestuous siblings.

I am itching to criticize some well-regarded writers' works, but I am not doing it because I am perfectly aware that my critique could easily be reduced to envy or just plain meanness.

I gradually became aware that my interiority was inseparable from my exteriority, that the geography of my city was the geography of my soul.

I much preferred winning to thinking and I didn't like losing at all.

You don't want your neurosurgeon to have doubts about the meaning of it all while he or she is operating on your brain.

If you can't go home, there is nowhere to go, and nowhere is the biggest place in the world-indeed, nowhere is the world.

We knew - but didn't want to know - what was going to happen, the sky descending upon our heads like the shadow of a falling piano in a cartoon.

Oh words, what crimes are committed in your name?~Jack or The Submission

Its been my experience during my military career that a leader displaying a THIRST for power will ultimately have a APPETITE for destruction to go along with it.

You can't make up for lost time. You can only do better in the future.

Even if it's being a Beatle for the rest of my life, it's still only a temporary thing.

To girls and women everywhere, I issue a simple invitation. My sisters, my daughters, my friends; find your voice

Versailles was a gulf into which the labor of France poured its earnings; and it was never full.

Having, First, gained all you can, and, Secondly saved all you can, Then give all you can.

Politics is not a science, as the professors are apt to suppose. It is an art.

Women like flames have a destroying power; never to be quenched till they themselves devour.

I was just thinking how unfortunate it'd be to be a fat girl named Candy.