I had very good dentures once. Some magnificent gold work. It's the only form of jewelry a man can wear that women fully appreciate.

A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.

One never knows enough about characters in real life to put them into novels. One gets started and then, suddenly, one can not remember what toothpaste they use; what are their views on interior decoration, and one is stuck utterly. No, major characters emerge; minor ones may be photographed.

We can love with our minds, but can we love only with our minds? Love extends itself all the time, so that we can love even with our senseless nails: we love even with our clothes, so that a sleeve can feel a sleeve.

Media is just a word that has come to mean bad journalism.

There are times when a lover longs to be also a father and a brother: he is jealous of the years he hasn't shared.

The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belongs to me and to no other. But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity.