Athens is the birthplace of modern tragedy. In the Greek tragic plays, the tableau of the characters would become a statue, like the statue of Oedipus reaching up to the Gods with blood spilling out of his eyes. I love the way the Greeks would immortalize experience. Things that all of us feel.

When somebody leaves this plane—or, if you like, goes into another room—those left behind sometimes try and stop loving—but this is a mistake, because even if you have loved only once in your life, you’re ruined.

I tried to convey to the boy how people's lives are often altered by curved lines read slowly from paper, sand, or stone.

Children are the closest we have to wisdom and they become adults the moment that final drop of everything mysterious is strained from them.

Succes is really nothing more than the record of failure. To be successful means you must be willing to fail more than anyone else.

If there is such a thing as marriage, it takes place long before the ceremony; in a car on the way to the airport; or as a gray bedrooms fills with dawn, one lover watching the other; or as two strangers stand together in the rain with no bus in sight, arms weighed down with shopping bags. You don't know then. But later you realize - that was the moment.

The most significant conversations of our lives occur in silence.