But we should ask the question: Why should a writer be more than a writer? Why should a writer be a guru? Why are we supposed to be psychiatrists? Isn't it enough to write and tell the truth? It's not like telling the truth is common. Writers are the earthworms of society. We aerate the soil. That's enough.

Whenever I go anywhere but Italy for a vacation, I always feel vaguely disappointed, as if I have made a mistake.

I think men have always been afraid of women's sexuality, and the restrictions they put on women testify to that.

Images are ... a kind of emotional shorthand.

You have to enjoy being a woman. Why should being a woman be such a negative thing where you always have to improve yourself? I have never in my entire life met a man who didn't want to go to bed with me because I was too fat.

One writes not by will but by surrender.

Sex has the unparalleled power to make us absurd to ourselves. It also has the power to make us understand transcendence.