It is not suffering as such that is most deeply feared but suffering that degrades.

Remember when you hear yourself saying one day that you don't have time anymore to read or listen to music or look at paintings or go to the movies or do whatever feeds your head now. Then you're getting old. That means they got you, after all.

Most men experience getting older with regret, apprehension. But most women experience it even more painfully: with shame. Aging is a man's destiny, something that must happen because he is a human being. For a woman, aging is not only her destiny . . . it is also her vulnerability.

Is it the obligation of great art to be continually interesting? I think not.

We live in a world of copies and we're fascinated when we encounter the originals (in a museum, for instance).

My emotional life: dialectic between craving for privacy and need to submerge myself in a passionate relationship to another.

A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.