I'd like to have the kind of house someday where a carousel horse wouldn't be out of place in the living room.

I think men talk to women so they can sleep with them and women sleep with men so they can talk to them.

Sometimes I think the difference between what we want and what we're afraid of is about the width of an eyelash.

The capacity for friendship is God's way of apologizing for our families.

Delia's arms were inscribed with a grid of self- inflicted wounds, an intricate text of self-loathing

There's a socialist bias to the consensus of the literary world: a '30s mentality that says factory workers are more worthy of our attention.

I like the fact that I'm living in the world rather than in a university.

If it's red, French, costs too much, and tastes like the water that's left in the vase after the flowers have died and rotted, it's probably Burgundy.

Reading a novel is just a much more involving and intimate experience than the act of watching a film. I mean, you literally get inside of a novelist's head, and you invest many hours to do so.

The most interesting things that happen in my books are usually the things that arise spontaneously, the things that surprise me.

Most novelists I know went through a period of intense self-examination and self-loathing after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. I certainly did.

People are always ashamed of the misery that has befallen them, as though it were an act of divine retribution for a long-forgotten sin of theirs

May be you have already reached your target, but if you don’t know this, you will move away from your target!

One owes loyalty, only, to those who demonstrate in kind.

[The notion of separating church and state with such policies as disallowing prayer in public schools] is a deception from Satan.

For those that were never wounded by love, they will never be able to say: “I lived”. Because they haven’t.

Big dress, cocktails, party - I love that. It is my work, but my work allow me to have glamour, to wear beautiful and amazing dresses, to go to big ceremonies.

The big picture is that there is no big picture. That's why we keep painting it.

The fact that my grown kids like to hang out with me, I mean, it just - I don't think it really can get any better than that, I don't think.

When philosophers try to be politicians they generally cease to be philosophers.

We have only to change the point of view and the greatest action looks mean.