Most of the people I write about have been ambitious outlanders who have been attracted to New York from other parts of the world.

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.

Hope is strength of soul.

Each moment of a happy love's hour is worth an age of dull and common life.

How would your life change if your self-esteem improved?

I hadn't been that impressed with someone since I worked with Meryl Streep.

A simple life is its own reward.

The world needs something stronger than any possible rebellion against its peace. In other words it needs a federal world government embodying a new conception of human life as one whole.

Life is beating against the school windows. You must quickly open the doors and go out to learn that no door must be locked against you.

Fear of failure is a far worse condition than failure itself, because it kills off possibilities.

I always like a good math solution to any love problem.

I don't ever look back. I look forward.