No new reader, however charitable, could open “Fifty Shades of Grey,” browse a few paragraphs, and reasonably conclude that the author was writing in her first language, or even her fourth.

We happen upon ourselves when nothing much happens to us, and we are transformed in the process...

We are not merely tempered and schooled by failure but compelled, in however subtle a fashion, to become something other than we were.

Still, there remains so much to relish and remember.

I do have one very brutal writing ritual. If I'm working in the morning, I don't allow myself a cup of tea until I've written two paragraphs. It's harsh.

Children, viewed from one angle, are philosophy in motion.

[W]e are not merely tempered and schooled by failure but compelled, in however subtle a fashion, to become something other than we were.

You have two choices in life: Live the life you want or live the life of acceptance.

I'm a Queens boy at the end of the day.

Description of man: dependence, longing for independence, need.

That's an amazing gift as an actor - to be able to say I have an audience in so many countries in the world and that people know my work.

For the time being I have seen enough of living things, of dogs, of men, of all flabby masses which move spontaneously.

I think to a degree this happens when they [russians] spot a softness in us, which I think for a while they did.

The heart says what only the heart knows.

Saying 'I could have done more,' Zin, is what marks a man as a man and not a God.

In the end, you write the book that grabs you by the throat and demands to be written.

Astonish me in the morning!