I am the queen of spades, I am the wasp that stings, I am the dark serpent. I am the invulnerable animal who passes through fire and is not burned.

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.

You are more to me than any of them has any idea

Hope is the blue skyAlways inviting but always shy. Hope is the flowers of imaginationAlways stimulate our mind for action.

Being funny is one of my greatest strengths. I can make girls smile when they're down, and when they're having a good time, I can carry on the joke.

If you thirst you may drink.

If you feel you have the right key, you try to make some phrase or sound that will fit.

Always say no to drugs. It will drive the prices down.

Some of the greatest guitarists, historically, have had no chops, they've just had great taste. I know a lot of musical school kids who just have no taste.

There were moments from my childhood when I remembered realizing that I was too big. I carried them around as weapons to use against myself, to remind myself there was something wrong with me.

I wrote like a junkie. I had to have my daily fix.

If we stop to apologize and forgive each other every time we step on each other’s toes, we’ll never have time to be friends.