Yo can always take back the lost parts of yourself if you can find and recognize them.
The first great real intimacy between two people begins when secrets are told.
Writing a short story is like having a short intense affair, whereas writing a novel is like a long rich marriage.
Although our emotions sometimes behave like spoiled, selfish children, unfortunately we cannot send them to their room or tell them to stop screaming.
Everyone coming out of a perfume store is smelling the back of their hand.
Fear pounds on the door to our heart demanding to be let in. Joy is modest and often comes into our lives like a shy person entering a room; it can take a while to even notice it’s there.
Even the handsomest men do not have the same momentary effect on the world as a truly beautiful woman does.
For an adult, eating alone at McDonald’s is admitting a kind of defeat.
I have never heard anyone say This is it. I know right now is the high point of my life. It will never get any better. Only in retrospect do we recognize the best times and of course then it is too late.
The Viennese wash everything. Where else in the world does the government hire public servants to wash public telephone booths and the glass over traffic lights? Every time I see someone doing these things, I smile like a child.
I write about what interests me. It’s very dangerous when you try to satisfy an audience.
Very often I’ll find out at the end of a book what I put in at the beginning. A sort of process of elimination and discovery in one.
I find you write with one person in mind. Usually for me that one person is my wife, because she’s my most severe critic and understands best what I’m trying to do.
Its easy to lose sight of what you want when you think you want everything.
Most men, no matter how well or badly dressed, carry overstuffed, beat up wallets that should have been replaced years ago. Why is that? Every time I see a guy take out a wallet anywhere, it looks like a piece of old melted chocolate cake-with strings.
When I was in college, I was the editor of the literary magazine and insisted neither the editors nor the writers be specifically identified-only our student numbers appeared on the title page. I love that idea and still do.
People are always waiting to be discovered.
Ive never seen myself as a fantasy writer-ever.
Coffee on an airplane always smells bad. Whenever it is served, suddenly the whole cabin stinks of it.
Death doesn’t make you sad- it makes you empty. That’s what’s so bad about it. All of your charms and beliefs and funny habits fall fast through a big black hole, and suddenly you know they’re gone because just as suddenly, there’s nothing left at all inside.