When I'm writing, I'm waiting to see somebody, and I'm waiting to hear them. It's almost like conjuring spirits out of the air, using your own imaginative instability.

When you’re in love you don’t have to do a damn thing. You can just be. You can just stay quiet in the world. You don’t have to move an inch.

As my mother once said to me, ‘They’re quite crazy, dear – men are. What you look for is one of them whose insanity is large enough, and calm and generous enough, to include you.

Forget art. Put your trust in ice cream.

In truth, there are only two realities: the one for people who are in love or love each other, and the one for people who are standing outside all that.

Needing something is not the same thing as being interested in the thing itself.

You are a real find and you keep me satisfied, up to a point. After all, I'm a malcontent and you can't change that.

If you want to see the consequences of ideas, write a story. If you want to see the consequences of belief, write a story in which somebody is acting on the ideas or beliefs that she has.

Gainfully unemployed, very proud of it, too.

A novel is not a summary of its plot but a collection of instances, of luminous specific details that take us in the direction of the unsaid and unseen.

There is no weather in malls.

What matters most, God was there for me, when I need him.

If you fear to take risks, your life will always be risky.

Oh! may each youthful bosom catch the sacred fire.

Without Divine assistance I can not succeed; with it I can not fail.

The similarities among different kinds of audiences far outweigh the differences.

The only gossip I'm interested in is things from the Weekly World News - 'Woman's bra bursts, 11 injured'. That kind of thing.

I'm not raising the children, I'm raising the grown ups that they're going to be.

Dark and stately is the warm, graceful tenderness of the Sarabande

I love the fact that 35 years later, I still hear my songs on the radio.

We believe in a strong dollar. Chinese financial assets are very safe.