One has to be able to twist and change and distort characters, play with them like clay, so everything fits together. Real people don't permit you to do that.

To know you will be lonely is not the same as being lonely.

People do not love those whose eyes show that they are somewhere else

The declared meaning of a spoken sentence is only its overcoat, and the real meaning lies underneath its scarves and buttons.

I have never begun a novel which wasn't going to stretch me further than I had ever stretched before.

I'm interested in where we are, where we're going, where we've come from.

Swimming always cleans your soul

It's like standing on the edge of a cliff. This is especially true of the first draft. Every day you're making up the earth you're going to stand on.

Good writing of course requires talent, and no one can teach you to have talent.

Nostalgia is something we think of as fuzzy. But it's pain. Pain concerning the past.

My greatest pleasure is to invent. My continual mad ambition is to make something true and beautiful that never existed in the world before.

Genius is an intellect that has become unfaithful to its destiny.

I think our job as parents is to give our kids roots to grow and wings to fly.

I've been to Indonesia, but I've never been to Thailand. I hear the people are lovely, the food is delicious, and that the heat and humidity are lethal.

I'm so proud of who I am and where I come from and who my father is.

I don't want anything from Cuba. I want them to be free and enjoy the things I enjoy.

As beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table.

It's really hard to balance work and being a mother.

How many of us really appreciate the childishness of the unconscious mind?

Contentment is an undervalued grace.

Who gathers the withered rose?