I had been reading a fabulous book [The Man Verdi, by Frank Walker] about [Giuseppe] Verdi, whom I adore.

It's no fun being lonely.

One of the few graces of getting old - and God knows there are few graces - is that if you've worked hard and kept your nose to the grindstone, something happens: The body gets old but the creative mechanism is refreshed, smoothed and oiled and honed. That is the grace. That is what's happening to me.

My father could be very witty, even if the humor was always on the darker side of irony.

I don't believe in things literally for children. That's a reduction.

'Hansel and Gretel' is one of the scariest stories ever written! Psychotic mother; stupid, inane father.

Because love is so enormous, the only thing you can think of doing is swallowing the person that you love entirely.