“Nothing could bother me more than the way a thing goes dead once it has been said.”

Honesty is a selfish virtue. Yes I am honest enough.

Nobody knows what I am trying to do but I do and I know when I succeed.

Love: the skillful audacity required to share an inner life.

It is natural to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes to that siren until she allures us to our death.

The difference between saints, forget-me-nots, and mountains, have to, have to, have to at a time.

It is extraordinary that whole populations have no projects for the future, none at all. It certainly is extraordinary, but it is certainly true.

This is the real thing of disillusion that no one, not any one really is believing, seeing, understanding, thinking anything as you are thinking, believing, seeing, understanding such a thing.

From the very nature of progress, all ages must be transitional.

One must dare to be happy.

Nature is commonplace. Imitation is more interesting.

It is inevitable when one has a great need of something one finds it. What you need you attract like a lover.

War is never fatal but always lost. Always lost.

Everybody thinks that this civilization has lasted a very long time but it really does take very few grandfathers’ granddaughters to take us back to the dark ages.

It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.

This is the lesson that history teaches: repetition.

A great deal of beauty is rapture. A circle is a necessity. Otherwise you would see no one. We each have our circle.

If you stand back and analyze the best way to do something, you’ll be standing there forever. Follow your gut and jump right in!

The only way to do it is to do it: by writing, writing, writing.

I hated singing. I wanted to be an actress. But I don’t think I’d have made it any other way.

I can do a book in three months if I spend all day, seven days a week at it and, in fact, I work better that way.

The boundaries became constrictive in what I was doing, and if my faith grew, it was because I pressed some of the boundaries in ways I hadn’t felt comfortable or responsible doing that before.

But all bubbles have a way of bursting or being deflated in the end.

To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way.

There is only one reality, but there are many ways that reality can be interpreted.