“A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”

Charm was a scheme for making strangers like and trust a person immediately, no matter what the charmer had in mind.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.

Do you realize that all great literature is all about what a bummer it is to be a human being? Isn’t it such a relief to have somebody say that?

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.

I have this disease late at night sometimes, involving alcohol and the telephone.

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.

There are too many of us and we are all too far apart.

Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?

Many people need desperately to receive this message: ‘I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.

I can have oodles of charm when I want to.

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.

Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, It might have been.

One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.

I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.

Sarah, there’s a government inside the government, and I don’t control it.

It’s your career, your face, your name. You have to be in control because if something gets messed up or something doesn’t look how you want it to, you’re the only one to blame.

This land is your land and this land is my land, sure, but the world is run by those that never listen to music anyway.

It’s important to drive your own ship, and it’s your career, so you might as well take it by the reins.

You can fight against people, and fight to the death, but can’t control the world.

I only have a stylist when I go to big events, but even then, I give them moodboards to show exactly how I want to look, so I’m mostly in control. I dress myself on a daily basis, though.

Leadership is not about control but service. Its not about power but empowerment.

The language of experiment is more authoritative than any reasoning: facts can destroy our ratiocination—not vice versa.