When times are bad, people like to lose themselves in the sheer glamour of another period: beautiful wardrobes, magnificent meals served in elegant settings.

I've gotten crankier in my old age.

Fear makes strangers of people who would be friends.

When you walk 10 hours, 11 hours a day by yourself, you are doing a walking meditation.

I wasn't afraid of getting old, because I was never a great beauty.

New York was the only city I knew in the world where you could be desperately lonely at nine in the morning, crossing the street for a bagel at Gristede's, and find that seven hours later you were drinking Irish coffee at P.J. Clarke's with all the friends you had inherited along the way.

I realized that if what we call human nature can be changed, then absolutely anything is possible. From that moment my life changed.