When every card in the deck is stacked against you, the only way to win a hand is to break the rules. You beg, borrow, and steal, as the old adage goes, and if you happen to get caught in the act, at least you´ve gone down fighting the good fight.

You can look at my autobiographical pieces as source books... But, you see, my fiction doesn't revolve around autobiographical questions.

We find ourselves only by looking to what we’re not.

Movies are not novels, and that's why, when filmmakers try to adapt novels, particularly long or complex novels, the result is almost always failure. It can't be done.

Art is not politics. The glory of the novel is that in its essence, it is a democratic form, because it treats individuals as worthy of scrutiny. That alone is a kind of political act. A good novel about a tea party of rich women can be just as galvanizing and important to the soul as War and Peace, so I think it's not really the job of artists to do anything. They can have their opinions as private citizens, but they must continue making their art.

...once you fell in love with her, you loved her until the day you died.

It always stimulates me to discover new examples of my own prejudice and stupidity, to realize that I don't know half as much as I think I do.