Avoid kneeling in unheated stone churches. Ecclesiastical dampness causes prematurely grey hair.

I've been homesick for countries I've never been, and longed to be where I couldn't be.

Falsehood is a critical element in fiction. Part of the thrill of being told a story is the chance of being hoodwinked. . .The telling of lies is a sort of sleight of hand that displays our deepest feelings about life.

Never eat a heavily sugared doughnut before you go on TV.

The need to write comes from the need to make sense of one's life and discover one's usefulness.

For lovers, touch is metamorphosis. All the parts of their bodies seem to change, and they seem to become something different and better.

It is not, as somebody once wrote, the smell of corn bread that calls us back from death; it is the lights and signs of love and friendship.