People who hadn't suffered a loss yet struck me as not quite grown up.

Ever consider what pets must think of us? I mean, here we come back from a grocery store with the most amazing haul - chicken, pork, half a cow. They must think we're the greatest hunters on earth!

I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.

But what I hope for from a book - either one that I write or one that I read - is transparency. I want the story to shine through. I don't want to think of the writer.

It seems to me that since I've had children, I've grown richer and deeper. They may have slowed down my writing for a while, but when I did write, I had more of a self to speak from.

It is not how much you love someone, but who you are when you are with him.

The Amateur Marriage grew out of the reflection that of all the opportunities to show differences in character, surely an unhappy marriage must be the richest.

It is very difficult to live among people you love and hold back from offering them advice.

Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.

People always call it luck when you've acted more sensibly than they have.

The hardest novel to write was Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant.

One day someone is going to read my autobiography and say “Wow, what a horror novel

He knew at the same time that this stricture of acceptance (by which what we must love is made into what we can love) would eventually be a part of himself

When we give government the power to make medical decisions for us, we in essence accept that the state owns our bodies.

My parents used to throw great New Year's Eve parties. They invited such an eclectic mix of showbiz people. All those cool people were always hanging out at our apartment.

Now, of course, you have guidance devices and all sorts of things. The soul would be more like the way this is all hooked together, a system of coordination.

When you make a movie with Alejandro Amenábar, he very quickly... it was very clear you're kind of operating in his dream universe.

There is nothing impossible in the existence of the supernatural: its existence seems to me decidedly probable.

A surprising amount of my jokes sound very implausible but are true.

My world view has always been that there's just an enormous amount of cultural and religious diversity out there, all of which is really worth taking in.

Plato once wanted to punish one of his slaves and asked his nephew to do the actual whipping for he himself did not own his anger.