Those who write need that "willing suspension of disbelief ", as Coleridge called it.

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.

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

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.

Graceful aging starts by leveling the playing field between emotional landmines and physical grievances.

Reboot your beliefs, create new thoughts, and choose powerful action.

Hey, you know that thing Dostoyevesky wrote on gambling? It's like that. When you're surrounded by endless possibilities, one of the hardest things you can do is pass them up.

A rhinestone skein, a jeweled brocade of light, –the city is a garment stretched so thinher festive colors bleed into the night.

My feeling about the Internet or anything else is that the more it tends to become a cult, the more I want to call it into question.

What does it profit a 78-year-old woman to sit around the pool in a bikini if she cannot feed herself?

The beginning of men's rebellion against God was, and is, the lack of a thankful heart.

The biggest weapon is to stay peaceful

I never put off till tomorrow what I can do the day after.

It's easy to have a good season but if you want to have a great season you have got to win a major tournament.