When you're writing, you're demented, alone, and full of doubt. It feels dangerous.

There is something very attractive about blonds, especially for brunettes. Its been said that blonds are loved and brunettes do the loving.

With short hair you begin to crave pearl necklaces, long earrings, and a variety of sunglasses. Short hair removes obvious femininity and replaces it with style.

I was a very polite schoolgirl who did her work very well and hid under tables. I'd hate to think I haven't changed at all.

My worst image of myself is me sitting on a bed, smoking a cigarette, waiting for a phone call and thinking thoughts that don't join together.

The thing about commuting internationally is that you have to be a lawyer or an airline steward to do it successfully.

The Germans have a wonderful combination of pathos, energy, and humor. They are like Californians with an education.

Paris is the only place where I feel that I lead a life that I can call my own.

I'd like to live in Paris, New York, and Los Angeles all at the same time.

I'm scared that if I collaborated on something with somebody, I would be in some way losing my own contact with what I was going and tempting fate.

I get very weird and defensive about what I'm working on - I wouldn't even tell my secretary what the next page of my novel was about.

The fortunate is he whose earnest purpose never swerves, Whose slightest action or inaction servesThe one great aim.Why, even Death stands still, And waits an hour sometimesFor such a will.

Encourage your children to read more and watch television less.

Be nice to people on your way up, because you'll land on them on your way down

I want to lie down on the bench then, or better yet, on the grass, rest on something living and see if I can hear the dead underneath.

Stay unknown until you know what you want to be known for.#StokesNotes

The film [Close Up] made itself, to a large extent. The characters involved were very real, I wasn't directing the actors so much as being directed by them. So it was a very particular film.

No politician is perfect. But in every election in your life, there will be one choice that is better than the others. Go out and vote for that one.

Luxury and dissipation, soft and gentle as their approaches are, and silently as they throw their silken chains about the heart, enslave it more than the most active and turbulent vices

Hip hop culture has done more for race relations in American than anything since Martin Luther King. And I really believe that.

It might be an idea for all literary critics to read the books they analyse aloud - it certainly helps to fix them in the mind, while providing a readymade seminar with your audience.