“Don’t you feel something magical when you’re in love?… I do, I certainly do … but I think that feeling of magic is a hardwired psychological response. It’s a chemical thing in the brain.”

Writers are a loosely knit community – community is an overstated word. Writers don’t see each other very much.

I think Joe Leiberman has been one of the leaders of the country… people have such a broad respect for him as a moral force.

Music is, of course, a universal emotional experience, cutting across cultures and languages. I studied piano for ten years as a child and consider that experience one of the most valuable in my life.

Time is the clarity for seeing right and wrong.

All beliefs not in such contradiction may be considered as faith. Whether faith in a particular belief is beneficial or not is another matter.

At every point of decision, the world splits into three worlds, each with the same people, but different fates for those people. In time, there are an infinity of worlds.

We try to connect. We try to find truth. We dream and we hope. And underneath all of these strivings, we are haunted by the suspicion that what we see and understand of the world is only a tiny piece of the whole.

The world is moving faster and faster, but where are we going?

The future is pattern, organization, union, intensification; the past, randomness, confusion, disintegration, dissipation.

Every essay – the subject matter of every essay – is ultimately about the essayist; him or herself. That ultimately, every essayist is writing about his or her view of the world.

Sons never escape from the shadows of their fathers. Nor do daughters of their mothers. No one ever comes into his own…Such is the cost of immortality. No person is whole. No person is free.

Franz Kafka is an idea person. His books begin and end in ideas. Ideas have always been important to me in my writing.

I have also been fascinated for a long time with the intersection of science and religion.

I think people all over the institution recognize that different ways of understanding are valuable. Artists may think in a different way than biologists or chemists, but you can learn something from that.

It is a world in which every word spoken speaks just to that moment, every glance given has only one meaning.

Will never fail to show his love, will never become jealous, will never fall in love with someone else, will never lose the passion of this instant of time.

I thought, briefly, that I would never feel as intensely connected to the world, to another human being, as I did at that moment.

It’s hard to enjoy practical jokes when your whole life feels like one.

I try to make music with emotion and integrity. And authenticity.

I do feel that I have to use my voice for those that don’t have one. I have to do the best I can in my own work to represent my culture, represent the women of my country, of Latin America. What we stand for. What we’re made of.

Since I have spread my wings to purpose high, The more beneath my feet the clouds I see, The more I give the winds my pinions free, Spurning the earth and soaring to the sky.

Narrative- and image-making creatures like humans don’t feel any experience is complete unless it’s recorded.

If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.

My songs are the reflection of how I think and how I feel in that moment. But I’m conscious of the fact that artists have a responsibility before the masses and they have to take care with their words.