Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right or better.

One does not go to Moscow to get fat.

The worst thing in the world is a bitter woman. That's one thing about your mother, she's never been bitter.

We do survive every moment, after all, except the last one.

I am sometimes visited by the heretical thought that there is no such thing as good and bad architecture, any more than there is good and bad nature. It is all in where you stand at the time.

The literary scene is a kind of Medusa’s raft, small and sinking, and one’s instinct when a newcomer tries to clamber aboard is to step on his fingers.

It is not enough for a story to flow. It has to kind of trickle and glint as it crosses over the stones of the bare facts.