I've read Proust and Stendhal. That keeps you in your place.

After Proust, there are certain things that simply cannot be done again. He marks off for you the boundaries of your talent.

I dreamt of being a writer once I started to read. I started to write 'Bonjour Tristesse' in bistros around the Sorbonne. I finished it, I sent it to editors. It was accepted.

All my life, I will continue obstinately to write about love, solitude and passion among the kind of people I know. The rest don't interest me.

Like so many of us, I'm brokenhearted about the death of the remarkably talented actor Philip Seymour Hoffman.

I grew up in a secular suburban Jewish household where we only observed the religion on very specific times like a funeral or a Bar Mitzvah.

I like the clowns from the circus that have more paint on their face. They were all funny and made me laugh. As a kid, I remember the clowns that were all in white reminded me more of death than circus clowns. It can be a scary thing.

If life after death really does exist, everyone probably gets what they expect to get, because that's the only thing I can think of that would be fair.