My imagination functions much better when I don't have to speak to people.

January. It was all things. And it was one thing, like a solid door. Its cold sealed the city in a gray capsule. January was moments, and January was a year. January rained the moments down, and froze them in her memory: [...]Every human action seemed to yield a magic. January was a two-faced month, jangling like jester's bells, crackling like snow crust, pure as any beginning, grim as an old man, mysteriously familiar yet unknown, like a word one can almost but not quite define.

What was it to love someone, what was love exactly, and why did it end or not end? Those were the real questions, and who could answer them?

And no book, and possibly no painting, when it is finished, is ever exactly like the first dream of it.

I was in New York. Hitchcock was in California. He rang me to make a report on his progress and said, I'm having trouble. I've just sacked my second screenwriter

I have no television - I hate it.

I think people often try to find through sex things that are much easier to find in other ways.