My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.

The trouble with European cities is that they are drenched in their history, almost all of which is terrible.

People say to me, "When did you come out?" But I was never in! When I was about six, I was swanning around the house in clothes that belonged to my mother and my grandmother which I'd found in an attic, saying, "I am a beautiful princess!" What my parents thought of this, I don't know. But they bore it. And the real problem was not my sin, but my unemployability.

As far as I know, you can fancy someone, you can enjoy their company or you can wish them well. But what being in love is, I don't know.

It's a strange situation, but people will pay your fare to get you to go and tell them how to be happy.

In Manhattan, every flat surface is a potential stage and every inattentive waiter an unemployed, possibly unemployable, actor.

The message that 'love' will solve all of our problems is repeated incessantly in contemporary culture - like a philosophical tom tom. It would be closer to the truth to say that love is a contagious and virulent disease which leaves a victim in a state of near imbecility, paralysis, profound melancholia, and sometimes culminates in death.