an odious crime, as old as the Bible and for an utterly despicable motive too and carried out in a cowardly manner, making use of intermediaries.

Fiction has the ability to show us what we don’t know and what doesn’t happen.

We do tend to believe things while we're hearing or reading them. Afterwards, it's another matter, when the book is closed and the voice stops speaking.

We don't object to our date of birth, so why object to our date of death, which is just as much a matter of chance.

But maybe that's what the dead do. They stay. They linger. Benign and sweet and painful. They don't need us. They echo all by themselves.

Burning the witch Giordano Bruno is one more wound inflicted on Christ’s body.

A man learns with age, if he is lucky.

Oh dear sunday, I want to sleep in your arms and have fun day.

A heap of bricks is not yet a house.

Life is short, but art lives forever.

When I write, I wear earplugs. I don't want to be self-conscious. I don't want to be thinking about the fact that I'm thinking about it. I just want to be in it. It's one element of hypnosis.

I can't stand that - those women in 'Waiting to Exhale' now. I can't stand them. But that's because I'm 53 and not 33. But what they were experiencing at 33, I identified with it.

Sometimes it is a great joy just to listen to someone we love talking.

I believe in God because of a personal faith, a faith that is consistent with what I know about science.