I lived with the terrible knowledge that one day I would be an old man still waiting for my real life to start. Already, I pitied that old man.

Cameras are a lifesaver for very shy people who have nowhere else to hide. Behind a lens they can disguise the fact that they have nothing to say to strangers.

A story is a living thing, it moves and shifts.

Every industry is going to be affected (by the aging population). This creates tremendous opportunities and tremendous challenges.

I could bear the memory, but I could not bear the music that made the memory such a killing thing.

Here's what I love: when a great writer turns me into a Jew from Chicago, a lesbian out of South Carolina, or a black woman moving into a subway entrance in Harlem. Turn me into something else, writers of the world. Make me Muslim, heretic, hermaphrodite. Put me into a crusader's armor, a cardinal's vestments. Let me feel the pygmy's heartbeat, the queen's breast, the torturer's pleasure, the Nile's taste, or the nomad's thirst. Tell me everything that I must know. Hold nothing back.

Her laughter was a shiny thing, like pewter flung high in the air.