"I fantasize about going back to high school with the knowledge I have now. I would shine. I would have a good time, I would have a girlfriend. I think that's where a lot of my pain comes from. I think I never had any teenage years to go back to."

"I was darkly convinced that at age 52 I would kill myself because my mother committed suicide at that age. I was fantasizing that she was waiting for me on the other side of the grave."

"Everything is contingent, and there is also chaos."

"If I can make people laugh it's like being a good lover."

"The fact that New York continues in the face of all of the chaos, of the crime, of the madness, you just think that it would just pop and vanish, just explode."

"I think of New York as a puree and the rest of the United States as vegetable soup."

"I knew I couldn't live in America and I wasn't ready to move to Europe so I moved to an island off the coast of America - New York City ."

"I understood once I held a baby in my arms, why some people have the need to keep having them."

"I say that I can't make anything up. I think of myself as a collage artist. I'm cutting and pasting memories of my life. And I say, I have to live a life in order to tell a life. I would prefer to tell it because telling you're always in control, you're like God."

"Skiing is better than sex actually, because for me a good round of sex might be seven minutes. Skiing you can do for seven hours."