“We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.”

Devils can be driven out of the heart by the touch of a hand on a hand, or a mouth on a mouth.

Add to those distortions to our own egos the corresponding distortions in the egos of others, and you see how cloudy the glass must become through which we look at each other.

Not facing a fire doesn’t put it out.

It is planned speeches that contain lies or dissimulations, not what you blurt out so spontaneously in one instant.

The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that’s also a hypocrite!

I don’t want realism. I want magic!

Some things are not forgiveable.

Time goes by so fast. Nothin’ can outrun it. Death commences too early–almost before you’re half-acquainted with life–you meet the other.

I have always been pushed by the negative. The apparent failure of a play sends me back to my typewriter that very night, before the reviews are out. I am more compelled to get back to work than if I had a success.

There is a time for departure even when there’s no certain place to go.

I don’t believe in “original sin.” I don’t believe in “guilt.” I don’t believe in villains or heroes – only right or wrong ways that individuals have taken, not by choice but by necessity or by certain still-uncomprehended influences in themselves, their circumstances, and their antecedents.

Glass breaks so easily. No matter how careful you are.

The scene is memory and is therefore nonrealistic. Memory takes a lot of poetic license. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart.

Luck is believing you’re lucky.

At the age of fourteen I discovered writing as an escape from a world of reality in which I felt acutely uncomfortable.

There is only one true aristocracy . . . and that is the aristocracy of passionate souls!

Collaboration is all about rewriting and rewriting and rewriting and helping each other to constantly improve a piece.

I could have danced all night!

Love is stolen in the shadows of the night. Though it’s wrong all along, it keeps going on as long as they keep it out of sight.

Getting inside the mind of a terrorist wasn’t difficult at all.

With infinite life comes an infinite list of relatives. Grandparents never die, nor do great grandparents, great-aunts…and so on, back through the generations, all alive and offering advice.

I don’t write all my stuff.

When I was a kid, my father used to tell me that everybody was celebrating my birthday. That’s what the trees are all about.

Almost all the bars in Southeast Asia are lady bars. The listener and participants who interact and frequent the clubs are exclusively male who become actively involved with the ladies, not the music.