If you are disappearing from yourself, but you're still writing, then there is a kind of activity of thinking going on, which in my world is similar to what's going on in music.

As your perspective of the world increases not only is the pain it inflicts on you less but also its meaning. Understanding the world requires you to take a certain distance from it.

I have a longing for fiction - to try to believe in it and to disappear into it.

For me, personally, it is very important that the days are exactly the same, so I have routines. I do the same thing every day.

Saying what you believe others want to hear is, of course, a form of lying.

The strange thing about writing is that it's so easy to write a novel. It is really easy. But it's getting there to the point where it's easy that's hard. The hard part is to get there.

I think that the best literature has a core that you can't lock to a time or place but that can generate lots of meanings and translations.

Shame tells you when you've gone too far. Then you try if it's okay to go too far. And it might be so that shame was right. You can never, never know that.

As a person, I'm polite - I want to please.

Most Christians expect little from God ask little and therefore receive little and are content with little.

And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on.

A lot of people, to attack an outspoken atheist, one of the things they'll do is say, 'You are as bad as the fundamentalist Christians.' And my answer is always, 'I hope so.'

By the '40s, Sam Goldwyn is a very serious man. By the '50s, he's the dean of American producers. To the end, he was Hollywood's gray eminence.

But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me.

Where ever I am I always find myself looking out the window wishing I was somewhere else.

I always look at my favourite photographs or favourite movies by James Bidgood or Sofia Coppola before I write my songs - they put me in the right frame of mind.

Writing is not just a job. It helps me to pray. It's a way of being.

I completely trust Gloria Vanderbilt. I have always found her very honest.

It is certain because it is impossible. -Certum est quia impossibile