My characters are galley slaves.

Knowing you have something good to read before bed is among the most pleasurable of sensations.

And the rest is rust and stardust.

Do not be angry with the rain; it simply does not know how to fall upwards.

Mind you, sometimes the angels smoke, hiding it with their sleeves, and when the archangel comes, they throw the cigarettes away: that’s when you get shooting stars.

Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form.

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

The writer's job is to get the main character up a tree, and then once they are up there, throw rocks at them.

There are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion.

I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is.

Loneliness as a situation can be corrected, but as a state of mind it is an incurable illness.

The power of intuitive understanding will protect you from harm until the end of your days.

The fact that my circumstances had changed drastically but my behavior hadn't was beginning to wear on me.

In the business of war, the role of women is really to maintain normalcy and ensure that there is cultural continuity.

If you're really concerned about deficits, you cannot take seriously a budget that would give $30 billion a year worth of tax cuts to not just the top 1 percent but the top 0.1 percent.

My ancestors were Puritans from England. They arrived here in 1648 in the hope of finding greater restrictions than were permissible under English law at that time.

That's what children do - throw food. That's not fighting. We were real men. We'd have chinned them.

If you make it, great. If you miss it - what's there to be afraid of?

Instead of waiting for opportunities to be handed to us, we need to create them. We need to advocate for ourselves.

I have no ego, I'll make fun of myself, and I'll make fun of being humiliated. I get it.

I admit that when the facts are not good enough, I always exaggerate them.