in New York there's such diversity that there's no one central identity; everyone is marginal.

Papa's love did indeed have wondrous properties: it not only compensated for her boredom and anxiety, it was the cause of her boredom and anxiety.

That's the hardest thing to do-to stay with a sentence until it has said what it should say, and then to know when that has been accomplished.

Psychoanalysis showed me that I might be neurotic because I was a girl but, as Chekhov might have put it, I alone had to squeeze the slave out of myself, drop by drop.

What Independence Has Come to Mean to Me: The Pain of Solitude. The Pleasure of Self-Knowledge

The older I grow, the more I realize how unfit we are for relationships. We are all such antagonists. It's part of the human condition to be deeply unfaithful to constancy. I do believe that.

Love can't be a metaphor anymore. If you try to make literature out of it, it doesn't work.

Science, like art, religion, political theory, or psychoanalysis - is work that holds out the promise of philosophic understanding, excites in us the belief that we can 'make sense of it all.

Scientists do what writers do. They also live with an active interiority, only the ongoing speculation in their heads is about relations in the physical world rather than the psychological one.

You are the instrument of your own illumination.

What you feel when you're writing is the relief of thinking: if you write the sentence correctly, you're clarifying. If you write the right sentence, nothing feels as good.

I was the original socially depraved shy ghetto kid.

Today, conducting is a question of ego: a lot of people believe they are actually playing the music.

What the hell, I paid my dues.

Things like depression and obesity are global challenges.

I think NATO needs to be looked at.

Sometimes the only way to carry a heavy burden is to share it with another

Should I eat first or accuse the Master of the City of murder? Choices, choices. -Anita

I've gotten to play some pretty intense characters and I tend to think it's therapeutic for me.

I never put on a pair of shoes until I've worn them at least five years.

Look at your ministry as a marathon not a sprint - build deep foundations of intimacy with God and never let your public schedule get fuller than your time alone with God.