“I know it may come as a shock, but it's sort of considered polite to wait for the consent of the woman. In fact, I'm pretty sure that if you don't wait, you may have to deal with pesky criminal charges like kidnapping and rape.”

“I don't wait for inspiration. I'm not, in fact, quite sure what inspiration is, but I'm sure that if it is going to turn up, my having started work is the precondition of its arrival.”

“I would like to have your sureness. I am waiting for love, the core of a woman's life."Don't wait for it," I said. "Create a world, your world. Alone. Stand alone. And then love will come to you, then it comes to you. It was only when I wrote my first book that the world I wanted to live in opened to me.”

“Steven dreamed of you the very secondyou died(So the poem goes)and you may have visited himBut I'm pretty sure you don't believein poems”

“The world is like a waiting room in a railway station; it is not your house.You are not going to remain in the waiting room forever.Nothing in the waiting room belongs to you – the furniture, the paintings on the wall .... You use them – you see the painting, you sit on the chair, you rest on the bed – but nothing belongs to you.You are just here for a few ...minutes, or for a few hours at the most, then you will be gone.Yes, what you have brought in with you, into the waiting room, you will take away with you; that’s yours. What have you brought into the world? And the world certainly is a waiting room.The waiting may not be in seconds, minutes, hours, days, it may be in years; but what does it matter whether you wait seven hours, or seventy years?You may forget, in seventy years, that you are just in a waiting room.You may star t thinking perhaps you are the owner, perhaps this is the house you have built.You may start putting your nameplate on the waiting room.”

“I'm sorry for calling you so early, but this couldn't wait. I can't go to dinner with you on Wednesday.""I can't see you at all actually.""I'm...pretty sure I'm in love with Travis.”