One alters the past to form the future but there is a real significance to the pattern which finally appears, which resists all further change.

There comes a time when you realize that everything is a dream, and only those things preserved in writing have any possibility of being real.

Love must wait; it must break one’s bones.

Women fall in love when they get to know you. Men are just the opposite. When they finally know you they're ready to leave

Sometimes you are aware when your great moments are happening, and sometimes they rise from the past. Perhaps it's the same with people.

I'm a frotteur, someone who likes to rub words in his hand, to turn them around and feel them, to wonder if that really is the best word possible.

I deem as heroic those who have the harder task, face it unflinchingly and live. In this world women do that.

Dresscodes are for styleless people.

Hope but not enthusiasm is the proper state for the writer.

What is the ultimate impulse to write? Because all this is going to vanish.

I like aristocracy. I like the beauty of aristocracy. I like the hierarchical feeling.

Women are made to be loved, not understood.

Time Warner has called and they want us all back on the couch, just consuming - not producing, not sharing - and we should say, 'No.'

When I was writing my first two books I was also freelancing and teaching and doing other odd jobs.

I love comedy. Playing the underdog, and getting the laughs is my form of entertainment. I could think of nothing different that I would want to be doing at this time in my life.

Religion is passionate, reckless, destructive, idol-smashing. It's a martyr burning at the stake. It's a crown of thorns and a cross.

How does this happen? To fall in love and be disassembled.

On my recent trip to the Mexico border, Border Patrol agents in California told me they have arrested the same coyotes 20 times, but they are not prosecuted.

You can't stay in one place. If you stay in one place you die. So you have to move forward.

The persistence of an all-absorbing idea is terrible.