All I do is lie, and that has made me immune to compliments.

Each one of us is left to choose our own quality of life and take pleasure where we find it with the understanding that, like Mom used to say, sooner or later something's gonna get you.

I'm for gay elopement, not for gay weddings. I've been with my boyfriend for twenty years. I don't feel like that would validate our relationship in any way. But I would really fight for someone else to have the right. Just elope, though, please.

You really burden the reader if you put things in but, "Oh, it's not interesting, but I'll put it in anyway." Then the reader's going to think, like, "Mmm... no thanks." So the thing is to cut all that stuff out before its published.

Up close the city constitutes an oppressive series of staircases, but from a distance it inspires fantasies of wealth and power so profound that even our communists are temporarily rendered speechless.

I spend so much time like living in the past or the future. I mean, I think most people do, really. And the moments when you're really present in your life can be pretty rare, really.

I can't seem to fathom that the things important to me are not important to other people as well, and so I come off sounding like a missionary, someone whose job it is to convert rather than listen.