Joan Juliet Buck quotes:

I'd like to live in Paris, New York, and Los Angeles all at the same time.

My worst image of myself is me sitting on a bed, smoking a cigarette, waiting for a phone call and thinking thoughts that don't join together.

The Germans have a wonderful combination of pathos, energy, and humor. They are like Californians with an education.

Practically everything I did as an experiment while I was working on the book made me feel cold, angry, and decidedly peculiar. Clinical. Because I wasn't acting from the motives people usually work from: to feel good, to have fun, to make something last.

To me, falling in love is the first step in losing my confidence. If I'm in love with somebody, I think that obviously he must have other people in his life. Everything that makes me balanced and happy is suddenly in the hands of someone else. It's an extremely uneasy feeling.

The thing about commuting internationally is that you have to be a lawyer or an airline steward to do it successfully.

I'm scared that if I collaborated on something with somebody, I would be in some way losing my own contact with what I was going and tempting fate.

I get very weird and defensive about what I'm working on - I wouldn't even tell my secretary what the next page of my novel was about.

I only envy as basic old sexual jealousy.

Paris is the only place where I feel that I lead a life that I can call my own.

I was a very polite schoolgirl who did her work very well and hid under tables. I'd hate to think I haven't changed at all.

I used to envy people who had written books, the way I think women envy other women who've had babies. I was resentful, shy, and inhibited around people who had written books. They'd done things I wanted to do.

There is something very attractive about blonds, especially for brunettes. Its been said that blonds are loved and brunettes do the loving.

With short hair you begin to crave pearl necklaces, long earrings, and a variety of sunglasses. Short hair removes obvious femininity and replaces it with style.

When you're writing, you're demented, alone, and full of doubt. It feels dangerous.

I always find myself loathing what I've just been before - the person who was living in the apartment that I just left, the person I was a year before. I constantly have the feeling of shedding skins and changing.

I love being in borrowed houses. I love being a bit out of my context. I miss my context dreadfully, but I'm excited by that.