What we want most is to be held...and told..that everything (everything is a funny thing, is baby milk and papa's eyes, is roaring logs on a cold morning, is hoot owls and the boy who makes you cry after school, is mama's long hair, is being afraid and twisted faces on the bedroom wall)...is going to be alright.

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.

And since gin to artifice bears the same relation as tears to mascara, her attractions at once dissembled.

all his prayers of the past had been simple concrete requests: God, give me a bicycle, a knife with seven blades, a box of oil paints. Only how, how, could you say something so indefinite, so meaningless as this: God, let me be loved.

There were hints of sunrise on the rim of the sky, yet it was still dark, and the traces of morning color were like goldfish swimming in ink.

Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go.

The more you know about something, the harder it becomes. You become more and more of a perfectionist. I think it's a curse... It's a form of illness!