“What suffering has taught me is the uselessness of suffering.”

I work with language. I love the flowers of afterthought.

We have two lives, the life we learn with and the life we live with after that. Suffering is what brings us toward happiness.

There are no wrong books. What’s wrong is the fear of them.

Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.

Those who write about life, reflect about life. you see in others who you are.

Children were strangers you loved because you could love. If they gave back love when they were grown you were ahead of the game.

The wild begins where you least expect it, one step off your normal course

… it’s possible to let love fly by like a cloud in a windy sky if one is too timid, or perhaps unable to believe he is entitled to good fortune.

Of course it would cost something, but he was an expert in cutting corners; and when there were no more corners left he would make circles rounder.

If you ever forget you are a Jew a goy will remind you.

I am somewhat of a meliorist. That is to say, I act as an optimist because I find I cannot act at all, as a pessimist.

(Clothes) cannot change a man’s nature. He’s either kind or he isn’t, with or without clothes.

If the stories come, you get them written, you’re on the right track. Eventually everyone learns his or her own best way. The real mystery to crack is you.

I sometimes confuse myself with the little I know.

As long as a man stays alive he can’t tell what chances will pop up next. But a dead man signs no checks.

We have in my country (Russia) a quotation: “It is impossible to make out of apology a fur coat.

I’m an actor, paid to act. I don’t bring personal problems to the sets. Dad taught me that.

Love taught me to die with dignity that I might come forth anew in splendor. Born once of flesh, then again of fire

I was raised a Catholic and when you’re raised a Catholic they don’t teach you to think for yourself. You’re taught not to think too deeply about things.

Girls are taught to seem, to appear – not to be and do.

Inside I knew he was meant to be the guy that taught me about life. Even if he broke my heart eventually.

I was a little, uh, incorrigible as a kid, so the kitchen was a good place to give me structure and balance. It taught me hard work, but then I grew to love it.

Man is the only one that knows nothing, that can learn nothing without being taught. He can neither speak nor walk nor eat, and in short he can do nothing at the prompting of nature only, but weep.

Culture is both an intellectual phenomenon and a moral one