Perhaps we'd understood each other too well to be attracted to one another. There were no occlusions in communication, those breaks in understanding that awaken desire.

Biography can be the most middle-class of all forms, the judgment of little people avenging themselves on the great.

The most important things in our intimate lives can't be discussed with strangers, except in books.

I think that there are empty ecological niches in the literary landscape crying to be filled and when a book more or less fills a niche it's seized on, even when it's a far from perfect fit...

I think sincerity was my sole aesthetic and realism my experimental technique.

Paris... is a world meant for the walker alone, for only the pace of strolling can take in all the rich (if muted) detail.

As a young teenager I looked desperately for things to read that might excuse me or assure me I wasn't the only one, that might confirm an identity I was unhappily piecing together

Tennessee Williams recognized that great theater begins with great talkers, and that great talkers obey two rules: they never sound like anyone else and they never say anything directly.

If I take a less defensive tone, I'd admit that I couldn't write today a very jazzy, contemporary look at America as I did in 1979 in States of Desire.

Ive always seen writing as a way of telling the truth. For me, writing is about truth. I have always tried to be faithful to my own experience.

I didn't want to write a biographie romancee especially since I already write novels, nor did I want to challenge the rules of the biography game, arbitrary as those rules might be

Stupidity is relatively harmless, but intelligent stupidity is highly dangerous

Lea, you know you should never have a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent.

Obviously I faced the possibility of not returning when first I considered going. Once faced and settled there really wasn't any good reason to refer to it.

I think it's time for the Army to understand that power should be enshrined in the people if we are to be a genuine democracy and not in any particular institution or organisation.

How could you be heartbroken and happy at the same time?

The reason I make movies now has a lot to do with having seen Star Wars when I was seven years old. That's the formative movie-going experience of my life.

God's people need to unashamedly and uncompromisingly stand on the Bible. We need to unashamedly proclaim a Christian worldview and the gospel, all the while giving answers for the hope we have.

There is nothing so depressing as a constant contemplation of one's self, and the greatest moral cowardice in the world's opinion comes from consulting one's own personal convenience.

Society historically has a difficult time with the concept of something new and foreign that shakes up our comfortable views, especially if it involves the very volatile question of sexual identity.

Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic-this is the spiritual path.