You have to be very fond of men. Very, very fond. You have to be very fond of them to love them. Otherwise they're simply unbearable.

Don’t be afraid anymore. Not of anyone. Not of anything. Nothing. Ever again. Listen to me: not ever again.

The words emerge from her body without her realizing it, as if she were being visited by the memory of a language long forsaken.

Writing was the only thing that populated my life and made it magic.

You think of outside your room, of the streets of the town, the lonely little squares over by the station, of those winter Saturdays all alike.

You didn't have to attract desire. Either it was in the woman who aroused it or it didn't exist. Either it was there at first glance or else it had never been.

...as long as nothing happens between them, the memory is cursed with what hasn't happened.

When it's in a book I don't think it'll hurt any more ...exist any more. One of the things writing does is wipe things out. Replace them.

He says he’s lonely, horribly lonely because of this love he feels for her. She says she’s lonely too. She doesn’t say why.

I think about you. But I don't say it anymore.

Our mothers always remain the strangest, craziest people we've ever met.

All we do is to look after the opinions and learning of others: we ought to make them our own.

For the same reason a disease cannot be cured by more of the germ that caused it, the inflation and debt accumulation of the Obama years will not inflate our way out of it.

I understand that being optimistic in this age is challenging, but I am optimistic nonetheless.

Planning a career, I always find a tricky thing, because I don't have much of a plan, really.

A man is worked on by what he works on.

Successful people become great leaders when they learn to shift the focus from themselves to others.

By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world.

I think if you're an unhappy person, you're always going to be an unhappy person. You're probably going to be less unhappy if your business is doing well, if I'm being honest.

I'm close to six feet, I like to think.

It isn't that I don't like sweet disorder, but it has to be judiciously arranged.