You know, there's something heartsick about parties like this. Look at us. We're all pretending to be smart, as if intelligence were the cure for our anguish.

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.

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.

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.

I love to have no plans. It is amazing where your day can turn when you have no plans: meeting people or just going to a little pub on the side of the road.

A painting that is an act is inseparable from the biography of the artist.

People still laugh at me in politics, they think I won't make it; but I think I will, after Harold Wilson, I will be your next Chancellor to become Prime Minister.

Digital media has destroyed much of the magic and mystery of the medium.

I've always been drawn to historical fiction.

For the poor, the economic is spiritual.

You know how Hollywood is: They just follow suit.

When I walk into bat, I should know that 'Yes, I've prepared to the best of my ability. I couldn't have done anything better.' That is when I feel that I am ready to go out and play.

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.

The idea that America exists in a culture of violence is bullshit. What America exists in is a culture of Kardashian.