There is this assumption that much of what I write is about my life, and that simply is not true.

After years of having immersed myself in science, I do think that if you master several different ways of thinking, it makes your own thought processes more agile.

I think that it's important for people to read philosophy and literature is not because I think everyone should be a well-rounded human being, but because it will help you think better about what you are doing.

In effect, painting is the still memory of [the artist's] human motion, and our individual responses to it depend on who we are, on our character, which underlines the simple truth that no person leaves himself behind in order to look at a painting.

I will turn human anatomy into roses and stars and sea. I will dissect the beloveds body in metaphor.

Good books, written by men or women, are ones in which you lose consciousness of the person writing the sentences.

We read each other through our eyes, and anatomically they are an extension of our brains. When we catch someone's eye, we look into a mind.