Why does the mind do such things? Turn on us, rend us, dig the claws in. If you get hungry enough, they say, you start eating your own heart. Maybe it's much the same.

Children were vehicles for passing things along. These things could be kingdoms, rich wedding gifts, stories, grudges, blood feuds. Through children, alliances were forged; through children, wrongs were avenged. To have a child was to set loose a force in the world.

The true story is vicious and multiple and untrue after all. Why do you need it? Don’t ever ask for the true story.

I’m not sure which is worse: intense feeling, or the absence of it.

I don't want to look at something that determines me so completely.

The characters [of The Tempest] have always been favorites of mine. It is one of his meditations on art - what it does.

I am nervous about dogmas of any kind, whether they be religious, political, or anti-religious. Too many heads have rolled because of them.