Mine is not an autonomous imagination.

I think men talk to women so they can sleep with them and women sleep with men so they can talk to them.

I'd like to have the kind of house someday where a carousel horse wouldn't be out of place in the living room.

Sometimes I think the difference between what we want and what we're afraid of is about the width of an eyelash.

The capacity for friendship is God's way of apologizing for our families.

Delia's arms were inscribed with a grid of self- inflicted wounds, an intricate text of self-loathing

There's a socialist bias to the consensus of the literary world: a '30s mentality that says factory workers are more worthy of our attention.

I like the fact that I'm living in the world rather than in a university.

If it's red, French, costs too much, and tastes like the water that's left in the vase after the flowers have died and rotted, it's probably Burgundy.

Reading a novel is just a much more involving and intimate experience than the act of watching a film. I mean, you literally get inside of a novelist's head, and you invest many hours to do so.

The most interesting things that happen in my books are usually the things that arise spontaneously, the things that surprise me.

If you believe in something because of miracles, then another kind of miracles can make you deny it.

Punctuality is the soul of business.

No one appreciates the very special genius of your conversation as the dog does.

Atheist n. A person to be pitied in that he is unable to believe things for which there is no evidence, and who has thus deprived himself of a convenient means of feeling superior to others.

You don't hit anything on the backswing, so why rush it?

And that is a story that no one can beat, When I say that I saw it on Mulberry Street.

I survived only a year in Berkeley, partly because I declined to sign the anticommunist loyalty oath.

The fundamental problem with banks is what it's always been: they're in the business of banking, and banking, whether plain vanilla or incredibly sophisticated, is inherently risky.

Whether he wants it or not, man is the instrument of nature; she imposes on him character and appearance.

May each of you have the heart to conceive, the understanding to direct, and the hand to execute works that will leave the world a little better for your having been here.