My natural orientation has never been among a community of writers, really. For some reason my social world has always been in the art world.

Every person has a range. In fiction, you get to be it all. I’m as much the men in my book as I am the women. I write how I write and there is no mission to stake a claim.

To be alive is to listen quietly while other people talk. That's how you learn something.

I was doing that thing the infatuated do, stitching destiny onto the person we want stitched to us.

I’d been listening to men talk since I arrived in New York City. That’s what men like to do. Talk. Profess like experts. When one finally came along who didn’t say much, I listened.

Danzon is my favorite Cuban music, played by a traditional string orchestra with flute and piano. It's very formally structured but romantic music, which derives from the French-Haitian contradance.

People who want their love easy don't really want love.

For me, truth cracks open in the places where things do not cohere. That's how life is.

It's amazing how life conspires to set you up with what you need.

A funny thing about women and machines: the combination made men curious.

I don't regard the real and true and authentic as something to claim as a moral high ground.

What worse you expect? World's cheapest thing is happiness and it is scarce.

A Blessing is a kind of 'Hope'.

The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead.

It is not the bigness of the words you utter, but the force with which you deliver them.

The refusal of the British and Russian peoples to accept what appeared to be inevitable defeat was the great factor in the salvage of our civilization.

Cruel impulses stir all about my kindly heart.

Sometimes you have to travel a long way to find what is near

I can't live without my iPhone.

We made and spent at least 10 million dollars. The thing is, we heard that the planet was going to end in 2012. We thought, We have got to spend this money before the asteroid hits.

I don't leave my house - I don't care if it's raining or scorching hot out - without a face cream with a minimum of SPF 15, if not more.