Only talent interests me in paintings and books. Not general ideas, but the individual contribution.

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.

This has suggested to some that the very structure of human thought is oppositional-that is to say, rational and associative, rather than linear and categorical.

Well, I myself am a 100% atheist. And I am increasingly worried that the Israeli-Palestinian struggle, which dominates our entire life, is assuming a more and more religious character.

The secret of survival is a defective imagination.

I think it's more important to show your work to the public.

I need you by me, beside me, to guide me, to hold me, to scold me, cause when I'm bad, I'm so, so bad.

Honey, a man can't keep his gun in a cookie jar. It just isn't done.

One day our grandchildren will go to museums to see what poverty was like.

I had no idea what I wanted to be when I was 17. I just knew I wanted to be something larger than myself.

The antidote to fear is faith.