“You can say or write anything about me you like. Just don’t, for any reason, ever tell the truth.”

I was brought up by two extremely intelligent people who gave me the greatest gift that man can give anyone, and that is freedom from fear.

I’ve always thought men and women are not too well suited to each other. It’s inevitable that they should come together, but, again, how well suited are they to live together in the same house?

The notion that work is a burden is a terrible mistake. Working and facing up to one’s responsibilities: That’s happiness.

You are the only person you can actually change.

All my life, I’ve stayed at parties too long because I didn’t know when to go.

If you always do what interests you, at least one person is pleased.

It is the plain women who know about love; the beautiful women are too busy being fascinating.

I realised long ago that skirts are hopeless. Anytime I hear a man say he prefers a woman in a skirt, I say, ‘Try one. Try a skirt.’

It’s either some kind of electricity or some kind of energy. I don’t know what it is, but whatever it is, I’ve got it.

Isn’t it fun getting older? is really a terrible fallacy. That’s like saying I prefer driving an old car with a flat tire.

I think most of the people involved in any art always secretly wonder whether they are really there because they’re good or there because they’re lucky.

I don’t regret anything I’ve ever done; as long as I enjoyed it at the time.

If you survive long enough, you’re revered – rather like an old building.

Plain women know more about men than beautiful women do.

I don’t think that work ever really destroyed anybody. I think that lack of work destroys them a hell of a lot more.

I’m a legend because I’ve survived over a long period of time and still seem to be master of my fate – I’m still paddling the goddamned boat myself.

The causes of events are ever more interesting than the events themselves.

Have the courage to use your own reason- That is the motto of enlightenment.

Modesty, temperance, and self-denial, are the sober offspring of reason.

Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason.

She was created to be the toy of man, his rattle, and it must jingle in his ears whenever, dismissing reason, he chooses to be amused.

I always told myself never to have a plan B – I feel like that’s also one of the reasons I’m doing what I’m doing now because I just never really rested until I got here.

I love man as my fellow; but his scepter, real, or usurped, extends not to me, unless the reason of an individual demands my homage; and even then the submission is to reason, and not to man.

Love, by its very nature, is unworldly, and it is for this reason rather than its rarity that it is not only apolitical but antipolitical, perhaps the most powerful of all antipolitical forces.