“Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.”

If, every day, I dare to remember that I am here on loan, that this house, this hillside, these minutes are all leased to me, not given, I will never despair.

You cannot divide creative juices from human juices. And as long as juicy women are equated with bad women, we will err on the side of being bad.

Perhaps all artists were, in a sense, housewives: tenders of the earth household.

Life has no plot. It is by far more interesting than anything you can say about it.

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

If you don’t have time to do it right you must have time to do it right you must have time to do it over. If you don’t know where you are going, how do you know when you get there? If you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.

Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for.

If you imagine the world listening, you’ll never write a line. That’s why privacy is so important. You should write first drafts as if they will never be shown to anyone.

The best slave does not need to be beaten. She beats herself.

There’s always a backlash against progressive ideas.

Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. That’s why people are so cynical about it.

Always do the things you fear the most. Courage is an acquired taste, like caviar.

I look forward and see myself look back.

If we can be sufficient unto ourselves, we need fear no entangling webs.

Dogs come into our lives to teach us about love and loyalty. They depart to teach us about loss.

Keeping a journal implies hope.

There’s no such thing as an unsent Christian. You have already been SENT.

In an economy that already has lost some momentum, one must remain alert to the possibility that greater caution and weakening asset values in financial markets could signal or precipitate an excessive softening in household and business spending.

The recent evidence increasingly suggests that an economic expansion is already well under way, although an array of influences unique to this business cycle seems likely to moderate its speed.

Science-fiction allowed me to go places that were otherwise inaccessible, which is why I started reading it.

I have never understood disliking for war. It panders to instincts already catered for within the scope of any respectable domestic establishment.

Books generally just confirm you in what you have, perhaps unwittingly, decided to do already.

When I climb a building, I’ve been there already, and carefully planned how to start the climb as well as how to do it.

to design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently to take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to acknowledge the mystery and stupefying complexity of everyday gestures like switching off a light of turning on a tap