If a man is to lose his fortune, it is a good thing if he were poor before he acquired it, for poverty requires aptitude.

I can always write. Sometimes, to be sure, what I write is crap, but it's words on the page and therefore it is something to work with.

It is human nature to imagine, to put yourself in another's shoes. The past may be another country. But the only passport required is empathy.

I was really interested in how marriages work, how you can, you know, be in love with somebody and spend many years with your lives intertwined, but in the end another soul can be fundamentally unknowable. And I think that the stress of war, when one party goes away and the other has to deal at home, is a really testing time in a lot of marriages.

Here we are, alive, and you and I will have to make it what we can.

The Sarajevans have a very particular world view - a mordant wit coupled with this unbearable sadness and... truckloads of guts, you know.

September 11, 2001, revealed heroism in ordinary people who might have gone through their lives never called upon to demonstrate the extent of their courage.