Weep all the artful tears you like. You shall never make my hard heart the softer.

And perhaps there is a limit to the grieving that the human heart can do. As when one adds salt to a tumbler of water, there comes a point where simply no more will be absorbed.

I barely knew I had skin before I met you.

Being in love, you know... it's not like having a canary, in a cage. When you lose one sweetheart, you can't just go out and get another to replace her.

Even ashes are a part of your freedom.

I knew Id always be a second-rate academic, and I thought, Well, Id rather be a second-rate novelist or even a third-rate one.

I do love the past but wouldnt want to live in it.

Why do gentlemen's voices carry so clearly, when women's are so easily stifled?

Why is it we can never love the people we ought to?

I never expected my books to do even as well as they have. I still feel grateful for it, every single day.

With every step I took away from her, the movement at my heart and between my legs grew more defined: I felt like a ventriloquist, locking his protesting dolls in to a trunk.

Anything creative requires a bit of acting, and filling in blanks with imagination.

Oh, how I wish I was a woman—his woman.

Be the consequence of finding inspiration not rent-a-storage for one.

The general function of dreams is to try to restore our psychological balance by producing dream material that re-establishes, in a subtle way, the total psychic equilibrium.

If you can't hold a person in your mind with a good thought, it is better not to think about them at all.

Often when religious leaders come together, they talk about a particular sexual ethic, or an abstruse doctrine, as though this, rather than compassion, was the test of spiritual life.

When have you ever seen someone who had no doubts who was also correct about anything?

I've always liked dressing up. And I love a high heel - the higher the better. I just feel funny in flats.

At this point, it's either for fun or it's for money. I don't take movies that I don't really like.

Mathematics is much less formally complete and precise than computer programs.