Real life security and contentment come not from putting a gun in the cupboard, but from taking a role in the world's future.
The human comedy begins with a vertical smile.
I think the most important part of storytelling is tension. It's the constant tension of suspense that in a sense mirrors life, because nobody knows what's going to happen three hours from now.
Although the paranoiacs make the great leaders, it's the resenters who make their best instruments because the resenters, those men with cancer of the psyche, make the great assassins.
What is art is not likely to be decided for decades or longer after the work has been producedand then is often redecidedso we must not think badly if we regard literature as entertainment rather than as transcendent enlightenment.
Amateur psychiatric prognosis can be fascinating when there's absolutely nothing else to do.
Over-eating is the most worthy of sins. It neither breaks up marriages nor causes road accidents.
My good fortune is not that I've recovered from mental illness. I have not, nor will I ever. My good fortune lies in having found my life.
Effort is only effort when it begins to hurt.
I guess maybe my art can be said to be a protest. I see things a certain way, and as an artist I’m privileged in that arena to protest or say publicly what I’m thinking about. Maybe the strongest work I’ve done is because it was done with indignation. Considering myself as a feminist, I don’t want my work to be a reaction to what male art might be or what art with a capital A would be. I just want it to be art. In a convoluted way, I am protesting- protesting the usual way art is looked at, being shoved into a period or category.
Perception number one, how you want people to think about you when you arrive and perception number two, how you want them to talk about you once you have left.