I could never kill myself. I approve of suicide if you have horrible health. Otherwise it's the ultimate hissy fit.

I love to read about anger. A "feel bad" book always makes me feel good. And no other novel in the history of literature is more depressing than Christina Stead's The Man Who Loved Children.

I loved Cookie [Mueller]. She was a much better writer than actress. She shouldn't have stuck with me in the beginning; she should have immediately become a writer. She would have had more of a chance.

Everyone's sex life is funny except your own. Every person's is, and yours never is. The lengths people go to — and the extremes and the conditions and the mental exercises and guilt and shame and happiness that everybody goes through — and what they'll do for sex is never-ending and mind-boggling and very interesting to me. And I don't think a lot of times people choose any of it.

I went to the Vatican once - it was a bad idea. I went into the bookshop and I bought hideous, pious postcards and then I asked for a receipt, and the nun said, "We don't give receipts at the Vatican." Which threw me into a rage of like, "I guess not, so you can take this money and funnel it into anti-homosexual groups!" People had to drag me out of there. It's not good for me to go into the Vatican.

To use bad taste, you have to know the rules of good taste. I've always thanked my mother for that. She taught how to eat with proper table manners and all that stuff, to the point of rebellion. But I couldn't have rebelled from it if I didn't know it.

Nothing is more impotent than an unread library.