She wore her sexuality with an older woman's ease, and not like an awkward purse, never knowing how to hold it, where to hang it, or when to just put it down.

You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality.

As far as I'm concerned, if you want to find out about the last day of WWII or the roots of the Indian Mutiny, get thee to a books catalogue.

The past is always tense, the future perfect.

Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.

Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.

Time is how you spend your love.

I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.

Don't confuse honours with achievement.

Pulchritude--beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection.

The more you read and observe about this Politics thing, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other.The one that's out always looks the best

As when we can recall so vividlyWe almost touch, Or think of all the gestures that we failedTo make.

I wouldn't mind dying for France, but not for Air France.

I call the light and high aspects of my being spirit and the dark and heavy aspects soul.

For us it's not easy to be conformist, I cannot stand to be conformist, I don't accept what it is, I like to say no. If I see an injustice I scream.

Each day is a little bit of history

When I'd tell people I like country music they'd get this look on their faces. People were kind of ashamed of country.

When you dance, do you feel desire? Do you feel as if you were summoning up a greater energy? When you dance, are there moments when you cease to be yourself?

Another of Cicero's maxims was that if you must do something unpopular, you might as well do it wholeheartedly, for in politics there is no credit to be won by timidity.

Take by surprise and the world gives up resistance.