Whatever solidarity I have established with other writers individually, it is usually organized around books. We connected as readers, as it were, not writers.

When I look at my old pictures, all I can see is what I used to be but am no longer. I think: What I can see is what I am not.

Home is where somebody notices when you are no longer there.

The perfect borscht is what life should be but never is.

Belief and delusion are incestuous siblings.

I am itching to criticize some well-regarded writers' works, but I am not doing it because I am perfectly aware that my critique could easily be reduced to envy or just plain meanness.

I gradually became aware that my interiority was inseparable from my exteriority, that the geography of my city was the geography of my soul.

I much preferred winning to thinking and I didn't like losing at all.

You don't want your neurosurgeon to have doubts about the meaning of it all while he or she is operating on your brain.

If you can't go home, there is nowhere to go, and nowhere is the biggest place in the world-indeed, nowhere is the world.

We knew - but didn't want to know - what was going to happen, the sky descending upon our heads like the shadow of a falling piano in a cartoon.

dont be afraid of death, be afraid of the unlived life.

I didn’t think it was possible — but this situation has managed to get worse.” “But you’re so calm, ” she observed.“That’s usually when you can tell everything has gone to shit.

Speak to me of love said St Francis to the almond tree and the tree blossomed.

Let’s go, let’s go together toward something extraordinary and I started making plans, thinking we would get that far.

The more lawyers there are, the more people are out there to encourage others not to go to law school.

You are probably right when you say that I could get a role in any producer's film if I just asked.

True socialism is the equalization of all privileges. The power to take advantage of them, - that is another matter.

The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state.

I always have a picture in my head of what I want. I will literally do anything to make it happen. I will kill myself; I will run myself into the ground to make it happen how I want it to happen.

Condemnation by category is the lowest form of hatred, for it is cold-hearted and abstract, lacking even the courage of a personal hatred.