And while it is true that I got the best woman in the world, I don't think love saves you.

Beauty, my first girlfriend said to me, is that inner quality often associated with great amounts of leisure time.

I claimed myself and remade my life.

I'll tell you the secret. When you begin with a character, you want to begin by creating a villain.

I was born in 1949, and by the time I was 10, I figured out that my hope chest was not aimed in the same direction everybody else's was. And that life was going to be very, very complicated. And that I could either be provocative and declamatory, or shy, retiring and scared.

I do not write about nice people. I am not nice people.

I told her, Don't touch me that way. Don't come at me with that sour-cream smile. Come at me as if I were worth your life - the life we make together. Take me like a turtle whose shell must be cracked, whose heart is ice, who needs your heat. Love me like a warrior, sweat up to your earlobes and all your hope between your teeth. Love me so I know I am at least as important as anything you have ever wanted.