Society was nothing but a long, dull dinner party conversation in which one was forced to speak to one's partner on both the left and the right.

I always feel it is a shortcoming of mine as a reader and as a writer that I frankly need to like somebody.

You can't be a good person when you're writing and a bad person to your husband or a bad friend. You can't be a jerk in order to be a good writer. You can't say, "I'm too busy writing to be political." You are one person. You are the same person in every aspect of your life, and you have to be a responsible person in every aspect of your life.

It is said the sesta is one of the only gifts the Europeans brought to South America, but I imagine the Brazilians could have figured out how to sleep in the afternoon without having to endure centuries of murder and enslavement.

Learn to write by writing

I'm very sentimental about lobsters. The last lobster I ate was the only lobster I cooked.

Using your imagination is the one time in life you can really go anywhere.