When my beloved arrives, I yawn. When my beloved departs, I weep.

Pain narrows consciousness; pleasure blurs it.

When Medusa looks in the mirror, she sees the Lady of Sorrows.

My passions have never jumped out of the fireplace and set fire to the carpet.

Retirement requires the invention of a new hedonism, not a return to the hedonism of youth

The sewing machine joins what the scissors have cut asunder, plus whatever else comes in its path.

Clothes make a statement. Costumes tell a story.

The laughter of the aphorism is sometimes triumphant, but seldom carefree.

'Be faithful to your roots' is the liberal version of 'Stay in your ghetto.'

Every day begins with an act of courage and hope: getting out of bed.

Totem poles and wooden masks no longer suggest tribal villages but fashionable drawing rooms in New York and Paris.

I felt as though my mind and heart had been dragged through a thicket of rose bushes and caught on every little thorn.

The white boys knew they had my attention now, but hesitated -- that's the trouble with being a racist in the white heartlands, you don't get a lot of practical experience.

I listened to many different types of instruments and music, and have always tried to look at the bass as an instrument as opposed to only a bass.

People who think well, write well

But it is never over; nothing ends until we want it to. Look, in shattered midnights, On black ice under silver trees, We are still dancing, dancing.

I have a catch-phrase to describe my plot-generation technique -- 'What's the worst possible thing I can do to these people?'

Embarrassment is the worst! It's the feeling of having your entire body go numb and not knowning what to do with yourself for that one moment

The eye goes blind when it only wants to see why.

The achievement of happiness requires not the satisfaction of our needs but the examination and transformation of those needs.

Wisdom is not the purchase of a day