The secret of being a writer: not to expect others to value what you've done as you value it. Not to expect anyone else to perceive in it the emotions you have invested in it. Once this is understood, all will be well.

Critics sometimes appear to be addressing themselves to works other than those I remember writing.

The worst cynicism: a belief in luck.

Love is an indescribable sensation - perhaps a conviction, a sense of certitude.

In love there are two things - bodies and words.

Truths are the last thing you learn about your family. By the time you learn, you're no longer their child.

A mouth of no distinction but well practiced, before I entered my teens, in irony. For what is irony but the repository of hurt? And what is hurt but the repository of hope?