“Unhappiness is our element. We come to believe we can’t function without it.”

Of all the foolish Fears of Humankind, Fear of the Future is by far the most foolish.

A poem (surely someone has said this before) is a one-night stand, a short story a love affair, and a novel a marriage.

We are so scared of being judged that we look for every excuse to procrastinate.

Someday every woman will have orgasms- like every family has color TV- and we can all get on with the business of life.

Freedom is a loose leash, license to be different from your mother and still be loved…Freedom is…not insisting that your daughter share your limitations. Freedom also means letting your daughter reject you when she needs to and come back when she needs to. Freedom is unconditional love.

Friends love misery… our misery is what endears us to our friends.

Really true intimacy is rare and it depends on other things besides sex.

The future is merely a shadow which blocks out the joys of the present and emphasizes the miseries of the past.

No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool. Writers, alas, have to be fools in public, while the rest of the human race can cover its tracks.

There are no atheists on turbulent airplanes.

Art is always an energy exchange.

It’s horrible getting older. I mean, it’s wonderful because you see the circles of life get completed. But it’s horrible losing your looks.

There is a rhythm to the ending of a marriage just like the rhythm of a courtship, only backward.

Ambivalence is a wonderful tune to dance to. It has a rhythm all its own.

The camera creates a magical transformation. It’s not enough to exist; we must chronicle that existence. …

A new dog never replaces an old dog; it merely expands the heart. If you have loved many dogs, your heart is very big.

You cannot do anything without God.It’s a profound and elemental truth. Not, you cannot do most things without God. You will not be able to do anything that you want, truly, in fulfillment, without God.

Upon this theology he rarely pondered. The kernel of his practical religion was that it was respectable, and beneficial to one’s business, to be seen going to services; that the church kept the Worst Elements from being still worse.

Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody.

Design, whether it’s on your body or in your home, is the same thing. It’s mixing different colors, different textures, and unexpected patterns – elements that you wouldn’t often put together in an interesting way.

Love in all its subtleties is nothing more, and nothing less, than the more or less direct trace marked on the heart of the element by the psychical convergence of the universe upon itself.

Love is the affinity which links and draws together the elements of the world… Love, in fact, is the agent of universal synthesis.

The reason why time plays a great part in so many of my tales is that this element looms up in my mind as the most profoundly dramatic and grimly terrible thing in the universe.

Soccer is a continuous game, rugby is a continuous game, but for the physical elements that are involved in playing a football game and the number of plays that you play, I don’t know that it was ever intended to be a continuous game.