Surviving means being born over and over.

My reaction to porno films is as follows: After the first ten minutes, I want to go home and screw. After the first twenty minutes, I never want to screw again as long as I live.

Perhaps it is because Venice is both liquid and solid, both air and stone, that it somehow combines all the elements crucial to make our imaginations ignite and turn fantasies into realities.

Spring, / you are a pinking shears: you cut / fresh edges on the world.

each of us only feels the torn lining of his own coat and sees the wholeness of the other person's.

We were not human beings going through spiritual experiences; we were spiritual beings going through human experiences, in order to grow.

I think that the joy of writing a novel is the self-exploratio n that emerges and also that wonderful feeling of playing God with the characters. When I sit down at my writing desk, time seems to vanish. ... I think the most important thing for a writer is to be locked in a study.