“…the reading, the observing, the living from day to day. It was something that had been born into her and her only – the something different from anyone else in the two families.”

I’m from Chicago, my family started a chain of movie theaters in Chicago that were around for 70 years and then one of them became the head of Paramount and the other was the head of production at MGM and we all came out of Chicago.

you may take it as an axiom that you cannot profit in Wall Street by continuously doing the obvious or the popular thing

In the cold of a winter’s night you got up and put your blanket on their bed so they wouldn’t be cold. You’d kill anyone who tried to harm the.

When you have learned, through discipline, to simplify your life, and so practiced the mindfulness of meditation, and through it loosened the hold of aggression, clinging, and negativity on your whole being, the wisdom of insight can slowly dawn.

We need an equal opportunity society, one in which government does not see its job as picking winners and losers. Where do you go if you want special favors?

Bad quarrels come when two people are wrong. Worse quarrels come when two people are right.

I think mine is a very rich life.

She went out and took a last long look at the shabby little library. She knew she would never see it again.

And always, there was the magic of learning things.

It was what God or whatever is His equivalent puts into each soul that is given life – the one different thing such as that which makes no two fingerprints on the face of the earth alike.

The neighborhood stores are an important part of a city child’s life.

You won’t die, Francie. You were born to lick this rotten life.

Well, there’s a little bit of man in every woman and a little bit of woman in every man.

Some people do crossword puzzles. I do books.

I wrote about people who liked fake fireplaces in their parlor, who thought a brass horse with a clock embedded in its flank was wonderful.

What was important was that the attempt to write stories kept her straight on the dividing line between truth and fiction. If she had not found this outlet in writing, she might have grown up to be a tremendous liar.

Oh, sure, the stupid bastard was crazy. He was insane. He thought he was living in the Dark Ages. Soldiers were peasants to him. I didn’t like that attitude, but I certainly respected his theories and the techniques he used to get his men out of their foxholes.

You can never completely fill that hole-you can try with songs,family,faith and by living a full life…but when things are silent, you can still hear the hissing of what’s missing.

Almost any evil you’d care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working.

Work is the means of living, but it is not living.

When you envy actors, only envy them for their good roles. Keep in mind they have to do a lot of roles to make a living, and not all of them are good.

Different places. Different ideas. Different people. It’s all hard to accept at times, and change can often be a little scary. But if there’s one fact that I’ve learned from raising a family, from running several businesses, from serving in Congress and now as Governor, it’s that nothing has ever grown without changing.

All artforms are in the service of the greatest of all arts: the art of living.

I’m a living abortion.