One has to pay dearly for immortality；one has to die several times while still alive.

A writer's life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity. We don't have to weep about that. The writer makes his choice and is stuck with it. But it is true to say that you are open to all the winds, some of them icy indeed. You are out on your own, out on a limb. You find no shelter, no protection — unless you lie — in which case of course you have constructed your own protection and, it could be argued, become a politician.

Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.

I fight pain, anxiety, and fear every day, and the only method I have found that relieves my illness is to keep creating art.

The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed in seventy or eighty years. Your body changes, but you don't change at all. And that, of course, causes great confusion.