“Glorious bouquets and storms of applause are the trimmings which every artist naturally enjoys.”

It is always much easier, I have discovered, to make people cry or gasp than to make them think.

I never did anything alone. Whatever was accomplished in this country was accomplished collectively.

Israel itself is the strongest guarantee against another Holocaust.

The public history of modern art is the story of conventional people not knowing what they are dealing with.

Don’t be humble… you’re not that great.

Anybody who believes in something without reservation believes that this thing is right and should be, has the stamina to meet obstacles and overcome them.

The deserts of the Middle East are in need of water, not bombers.

We don’t want wars even when we win.

From Russia I didn’t bring out a single happy memory, only sad, tragic ones. The nightmare of pogroms, the brutality of Cossacks charging young Socialists, fear, shrieks of terror.

As President Nixon says, presidents can do almost anything, and President Nixon has done many things that nobody would have thought of doing.

Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you’re aboard, there’s nothing you can do.

Show me a sensible person who likes himself or herself! I know myself too well to like what I see. I know but too well that I’m not what I’d like to be.

The modern woman asks herself: Is there something wrong with me if my children don’t fill up my life?

Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.

There can be no doubt that the average man blames much more than he praises. His instinct is to blame. If he is satisfied he says nothing; if he is not, he most illogically kicks up a row.

I’m a slave to this leaf in a diary that lists what I must do, what I must say, every half hour.