Novelist Quotes

True friends: only a few have 'em, but only a few will admit that they don't.

Our goal should be to achieve joy.

I've spent my whole life in Chicago being asked where am I from, so that I have a sense of displacement that also is very psychologically disorienting.

I'm obviously an American citizen. My parents are American citizens. But I'm not looked at as an American.

I'm concerned about a lot of serious border issues. This book is about the border reality and the struggles of the undocumented worker.

I was just, like, not at all the office type; I was the artist type.

I wanted everything. What could you not want when you are brown and Indian-looking in a society in which the white aesthetic is praised as acceptable?

For things to have value in man's world, they are given the role of commodities. Among man's oldest and most constant commodity is woman.

There are things coming from me that I felt I wanted to talk about. My search for my own blend of spirituality, my acknowledgement of my sexuality, my being the single mother of a young man.

Human sexuality has been regulated and shaped by men to serve men's needs.

The will is never free - it is always attached to an object, a purpose. It is simply the engine in the car - it can't steer.

Remember I'm an artist. And you know what that means in a court of law. Next worst to an actress.

Religion is organized to satisfy and guide the soul - politics does the same thing for the body.

Love doesn't grow on trees like apples in Eden - it's something you have to make. And you must use your imagination too.

It is a tragedy of the world that no one knows what he doesn't know - the less a man knows, the more sure it is that he knows everything.

God is a character, a real and consistent being, or He is nothing. If God did a miracle He would deny His own nature and the universe would simply blow up, vanish, become nothing.

A novel should be an experience and convey an emotional truth rather than arguments.

For good and evil, man is a free creative spirit. This produces the very queer world we live in, a world in continuous creation and therefore continuous change and insecurity.

I look upon life as a gift from God. I did nothing to earn it. Now that the time is coming to give it back, I have no right to complain.

The right diet directs sexual energy into the parts that matter.

I'll keep going till my face falls off.

I have always found women difficult. I don't really understand them. To begin with, few women tell the truth.

As long as the plots keep arriving from outer space, I'll go on with my virgins.

A woman should say: 'Have I made him happy? Is he satisfied? Does he love me more than he loved me before? Is he likely to go to bed with another woman?' If he does, then it's the wife's fault because she is not trying to make him happy.

Among men, sex sometimes results in intimacy; among women, intimacy sometimes results in sex.

After forty a woman has to choose between losing her figure or her face. My advice is to keep your face, and stay sitting down.

A historical romance is the only kind of book where chastity really counts.

France is the only place where you can make love in the afternoon without people hammering on your door.

To sleep around is absolutely wrong for a woman; it's degrading and it completely ruins her personality. Sooner or later it will destroy all that is feminine and beautiful and idealistic in her.

A woman asking 'Am I good? Am I satisfied?' is extremely selfish. The less women fuss about themselves, the less they talk to other women, the more they try to please their husbands, the happier the marriage is going to be.