Paris... is a world meant for the walker alone, for only the pace of strolling can take in all the rich (if muted) detail.

Biography can be the most middle-class of all forms, the judgment of little people avenging themselves on the great.

The most important things in our intimate lives can't be discussed with strangers, except in books.

I think that there are empty ecological niches in the literary landscape crying to be filled and when a book more or less fills a niche it's seized on, even when it's a far from perfect fit...

I think sincerity was my sole aesthetic and realism my experimental technique.

As a young teenager I looked desperately for things to read that might excuse me or assure me I wasn't the only one, that might confirm an identity I was unhappily piecing together

Tennessee Williams recognized that great theater begins with great talkers, and that great talkers obey two rules: they never sound like anyone else and they never say anything directly.

If I take a less defensive tone, I'd admit that I couldn't write today a very jazzy, contemporary look at America as I did in 1979 in States of Desire.

Ive always seen writing as a way of telling the truth. For me, writing is about truth. I have always tried to be faithful to my own experience.

I didn't want to write a biographie romancee especially since I already write novels, nor did I want to challenge the rules of the biography game, arbitrary as those rules might be

At certain crucial moments - an emergency or an opportunity - one must act first and think later.

It is the tuning of the universe... It's as if at the beginning of the symphony God turns up the volume just a tiny bit.

There are acres of diamonds in the problem you have before you right now.

Whenever all men are...hastening to be slaves or tyrants we make Liberalism the prime bogey.

In California virtually everyone has had their teeth whitened. If they all smiled at once, they would give us a headache.

I have faith, as I did when I announced my stem-cell decision in 2001, that science and ethics can coexist.

You cannot reach a correct conclusion if you begin with an incorrect assumption

No man is the wiser for his learning

Every show on television has a downward trend because there are so many more things to watch. You can only deal with what is the benchmark of a hit series and 'Survivor' clearly remains a hit series.

It reminds me of two drunks leaning on each other.

If Barack Obama becomes the president in November again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.