When a novel comes, it's a grace. Something in the cosmos has forgiven you long enough so that you can start.

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.

The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.

Khomeini has offered us the opportunity to regain our frail religion ... faith in the power of words.

There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.

Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war.

America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestants who live in the center, in the serene eye of the big wind.

I was thinking that surgeons had to be the happiest people on earth. To cut people up and get paid for it-that's happiness, I told myself.

Love asks us that we be a little braver than is comfortable, a little more generous, a little more flexible. It means living on the edge more than we care to.

Reaching consensus in a group is often confused with finding the right answer.

You're under arrest for multiple counts of murder. You have the right to not much at all, really. Do you have anything to say in your defense?

A rumble gurgled through the space between them."Was that you?"She looked down. "Was that me?""That noise. It sounded like a growl."Well according to you, I am a ferocious car burglar.

It it's true that fastidiousness and attention to detail is very much in my genes - if you knew my parents, you'd see that this is something I've inherited, only doubly so.

Those who make war against the United States have chosen their own destruction.

I've had a little plastic surgery. I've had a little lipo. I've had a little Botox. And you know what? None of it works. None of it.

I don't really like filling my brain with a lot of stuff.

I find celebrity really scary.

I love shooting French films because I don't have to stick with being sophisticated or stuck-up.

The older we become, the more certain our future.

Can true function arise from basic dysfunction?