Bottles of wine aren't like paintings. At some point you have to consume them. The object in life is to die with no bottles of wine in your cellar. To drink your last bottle of wine and go to sleep that night and not wake up.

Add anchovies to almost anything, in moderation, and it will taste better.

It's the cynics who never get married.

The most interesting things that happen in my books are usually the things that arise spontaneously, the things that surprise me.

I was fortunate to get a lot of mileage out of my vices . . . The point is not to be debilitated by your pleasures. Maybe I have lucky genes or something but I've never been truly addicted to anything, except pleasure in general.

We've been hearing about the death of the novel ever since the day after Don Quixote was published.

Your presence here is is only a matter of conducting an experiment in limits, reminding yourself of what you aren’t.