Silence is the bluntest of blunt instruments. It seems to hammer you into the ground. It drives you deeper and deeper into your own guilt. It makes the voices inside your head accuse you more viciously than any outside voices ever could.

You don't get to choose what you get famous for and you don't get to control which of your life's many struggles gets to stand for you.

You should write first drafts as if they will never be shown to anyone.

Pleasure is terrifying because it breaks down the boundaries between people. Embracing passion means living with fear.

Photographs are the most curious indicators of reality.

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.

To name oneself is the first act of both the poet and the revolutionary. When we take away the right to an individual name, we symbolically take away the right to be an individual. Immigration officials did this to refugees; husbands routinely do it to wives.