The circle of an empty day is brutal and at night it tightens around your neck like a noose

The rules say that to tell a story you need first of all a measuring stick, a calendar, you have to calculate how much time has passed between you and the facts, the emotions to be narrated.

I believe that books, once they are written, have no need of their authors.

It's the people who love us or hate us - or both - who hold together the thousands of fragments we are made of.

Existence is this, I thought, a start of joy, a stab of pain, an intense pleasure, veins that pulse under the skin, there is no other truth to tell.

I didn't choose anonymity.Instead, I chose absence.

I think our sexuality is all yet to be recounted and that the rich male literary tradition constitutes a huge obstacle.

I don't have any special passion for politics, it being a never-ending merry-go-round of bosses big and small, all generally mediocre. I actually find it boring.

In order not to cut out a large part of one's private life, the creative work should not swallow up every other form of self-expression. But that is the most complicated thing.

I have always paid careful attention to social and economic conflicts, to the dialectic - if we can call it that - between high and low. Maybe it's because I was not born or brought up in affluence.

I am the queen of spades, I am the wasp that stings, I am the dark serpent. I am the invulnerable animal who passes through fire and is not burned.

That’s what children eventually were for their aging parents: custodians of technology, free personal IT departments keeping them from disappearing forever from the universal cloud.

To what do you attribute your advanced age? Well I suppose I must attribute it to the fact that I have not died.

There is a coming home. A home base. Psychedelics help you reconnect with home.

I am really into '70s music, like The Rolling Stones, The Doors and what not.

Bren MacGuff: Well, honey, doctors are sadists who like to play God and watch lesser people scream.

We should focus more on the things we've accomplished, but I mean, obviously Syria disturbs me greatly and I'm not happy with where Syria is.

Have compassion for everyone you meet, even if they don’t want it.

Honoring everyone contains the promise of possibility.

I only have one why, and my challenge is to make sure the things I say and the things I do remain consistent for as often and as long as possible.

Look on beauty, And you shall see 'tis purchased by the weight, Which therein works a miracle in nature, Making them lightest that wear most of it.