Reading a book, for me at least, is like traveling in someone else's world. If it's a good book, then you feel comfortable and yet anxious to see what's going to happen to you there, what'll be around the next corner. But if it's a lousy book, then it's like going through Secaucus, New Jersey -- it smells and you wish you weren't there, but since you've started the trip, you roll up the windows and breathe through your mouth until you're done.

It took me less than half a lifetime to realize that regret is one of the few guaranteed certainties. Sooner or later everything is touched by it, despite our naive and senseless hope that just this time we will be spared its cold hand on our heart.

Learn to wait; invariably either things will change or your heart will.

Very often I'll find out at the end of a book what I put in at the beginning. A sort of process of elimination and discovery in one.

Even the handsomest men do not have the same momentary effect on the world as a truly beautiful woman does.

The only question that nobody ever asks is: What breaks your heart? I think that should be asked of all "artists."... So, what breaks your heart?

I had always liked blind dates. If nothing else, it was an interesting way of discovering what people thought of you.