We all have fantasies about sex that are more perfect than anything in reality.

All my forebears worked for a living. My grandfather painted portraits. My mother too. My aunt painted seascapes.

Books go out into the world, travel mysteriously from hand to hand, and somehow find their way to the people who need them at the times when they need them ... Cosmic forces guide such passings-along.

When I sit down at my writing desk, time seems to vanish. I think it's a wonderful way to spend one's life.

At times it is strangely sedative to know the extent of your own powerlessness.

Why do analysts always answer a question with a question?

It is the artists who make the true value of the world, though at times they may have to starve to do it. They are like earthworms, turning up the soil so things can grow, eating dirt so that the rest of us may eat green shoots.