how the French can talk. About a stew, about a fly on the parapet, about death, about anything.

We write out of revenge against reality, to dream and enter the lives of others.

One learns much more by writing fiction, because the insights come from those deeper subconscious levels where the greater and more interesting truths lie.

Americans and their desire to be novelists, the American novel should be listed in medical dictionaries alongside Megalomania and Obsessional Neuroses.

Only friends will tell you the truths you need to hear to make your life bearable.

Why are there no great women artists?' sounds as ignorant of human geography as the query 'Why are there no Eskimo tennis teams?

I shall never cease to marvel at the way we beg for love and tyranny.

All our parents have levels of deviousness. We're driven to write about this discrepancy between the bright shining selves they invented and the monsters lurking underneath.

Art is both a vengeance against reality and a reconciliation with it.

I venture that those of us who are most serene when faced with the possibility of nothingness are the ones who've reached furthest to the downward and upward of their beings.

As to why people like Joseph Lelyveld are writing memoirs, I think they're just catching on the coattails of the trend.

Faith is a sacred fruit.

You could string a hundred endless days together, My soul would find no comfort from this pain.You laugh at my tale? You may be educatedBut you haven’t learned to love till you’re insane

My father used to say: Son if you are not bright you've got to be methodical (defusing argument when challenged and proved right)

After a century of striving, after a year of debate, after a historic vote, health care reform is no longer an unmet promise. It is the law of the land.

The Ethiopian cannot change his skin nor the leopard his spots.

A mistake is only an error, it becomes a mistake when you fail to correct it

Life is too short for half-hearted connections and meaningless run-throughs.

I don't know Heidi Klum. She was never known in France. Claudia Schiffer also doesn't know who she is.

My message to women is: Women: We can do it. We are capable of doing almost anything, but we must learn we cannot do it all at once, we need to prioritize.

Better to be ignorant of a matter than half know it.