Real love is always chaotic. You lose control; you lose perspective. You lose the ability to protect yourself. The greater the love, the greater the chaos. It’s a given and that’s the secret.

Your boyfriend had a dream about potatoes and you're asking me to interpret it? I'm just old. Being old doesn't mean you know more; it means you ate enough fiber.

Yo can always take back the lost parts of yourself if you can find and recognize them.

Everyone coming out of a perfume store is smelling the back of their hand.

The Viennese wash everything. Where else in the world does the government hire public servants to wash public telephone booths and the glass over traffic lights? Every time I see someone doing these things, I smile like a child.

Time talks behind our back. To our face it's friendly and logical, never hesitating to give more of itself. But when we're not looking, it steals our lives and says bad things about us to the parts of us it's stolen

A short story is a sprint, a novel is a marathon. Sprinters have seconds to get from here to there and then they are finished. Marathoners have to carefully pace themselves so that they don't run out of energy (or in the case of the novelist-- ideas) because they have so far to run. To mix the metaphor, writing a short story is like having a short intense affair, whereas writing a novel is like a long rich marriage.