As a reader, I want a book to kidnap me into its world. Its world must make my so-called real world seem flimsy. Its world must lure me to return. When I close the book, I should feel bereft.
I stand in the mist and cry, thinking of myself standing in the mist and crying, and wondering if I will ever be able to use this experience in a book.
Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed.
What is the fatal charm of Italy? What do we find there that can be found nowhere else? I believe it is a certain permission to be human, which other places, other countries, lost long ago.
Humor is one of the most serious tools we have for dealing with impossible situations.
A book burrows into your life in a very profound way because the experience of reading is not passive.
People are terrified. A lot of them are in relationships that aren’t satisfying, and if you tell them they can change their life, they get really scared.
If, every day, I dare to remember that I am here on loan, that this house, this hillside, these minutes are all leased to me, not given, I will never despair.
Driving me away is easier than saying goodbye.
Many people today believe that cynicism requires courage. Actually, cynicism is the height of cowardice. It is innocence and open-heartednes s that requires the true courage – however often we are hurt as a result of it.
That was probably the mistake of my generation, that we thought that having sex with anyone would be intimate and it wasn’t.
If we can be sufficient unto ourselves, we need fear no entangling webs.
Fame means millions of people have the wrong idea of who you are.
They keep saying the right person will come along. I think mine got hit by a truck.
I don’t think that sex necessarily produces intimacy.
Nothing quite has reality for me till I write it all down – revising and embellishing as I go. I’m always waiting for things to be over so I can get home and commit them to paper.
The trick is not how much pain you feel – but how much joy you feel. Any idiot can feel pain. Life is full of excuses to feel pain, excuses not to live, excuses, excuses, excuses.
Someday every woman will have orgasms- like every family has color TV- and we can all get on with the business of life.
I believe that there’s a force of life in the universe, and that when we’re writing or making music or painting, we’re likely to connect with that flow.
I don’t know what the definition of pornography is and nobody else does either. Pornography is somebody else’s erotica that you don’t like. People are interested in their own sexuality and they’ve always reflected it in their art. End of story.