Over the city lies the sweet, rotting odor of yesterday's unrecollected sins.

I dislike pastiche; it attracts attention to the language only.

It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.

Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.

Fortitude. ... It means fixity of purpose. It means endurance. It means having the strength to live with what constrains you.

Feminism hasn't failed, it's just never been tried.

Truth can break the gates down, truth can howl in the street; unless truth is pleasing, personable and easy to like, she is condemned to stay whimpering at the back door.

If you have a good story idea, don't assume it must form a prose narrative. It may work better as a play, a screenplay or a poem. Be flexible.

The things you think are the disasters in your life are not the disasters really. Almost anything can be turned around: out of every ditch, a path, if you can only see it.

I didn't cry much after I was 35, but staggered stony-faced into middle age, a handkerchief still in my bag just in case.

You're only young once, they say, but doesn't it go on for a long time? More years than you can bear.

Be happy, be happy.

I'm pro-choice. But I hope that choice will be life.

I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars.

Success in the revolution and construction depends on how a party, the General Staff of the revolution, is built and on how its leadership role is enhanced.

I fell in love with the place! You know, the people, the bourbon, the music... it's in the air. It's something you can't describe on camera.

but right now it's Bob Dylan Bob Dylan Bob Dylan all the way.

The fate of the Empire rests on this enterprise. Every man must devote himself totally to the task in hand.

My agent called me at 5:30am, and I thought the set of my movie had burned down, or Josh [Hutcherson] had died, or something…I didn’t realize! I was so tired!

The beautiful is always severe.

Would that God, Monsieur, had rendered us worthy of spending our lives, as Our Lord did, for the salvation of those poor souls so far removed from all assistance.