“Your appearance can be a weapon. As powerful as any knife or gun.”

Physical pain is a fact that comes with living, just as illness or financial woes or broken relationships are facts. But misery is a state of mind, a reaction to the facts, that can be controlled or altered by an act of will.

My abortion was so long ago I didn’t think I needed help. I hoped God had forgiven me but I hadn’t realized I didn’t forgive myself. After attending this safe, nurturing group I know that I am forgiven and set free.

Pain nourishes courage. You can’t be brave if you’ve only had wonderful things happen to you.

Pain is inevitable. Misery is optional.

An enlightened citizen is an indispensable ingredient of the infrastructure of democracy.

Clutter is postponed decisions.

I don’t invest in rich kids’ businesses.

I probably use my chef’s knives more than any other tool in the kitchen. I’m not married to a particular brand, because they all work, they all have sharp blades.

You don’t learn knife skills at cooking school, because they give you only six onions and no matter how hard you focus on those six onions there are only six, and you’re not going to learn as much as when you cut up a hundred.

Of all the works of man I like best Those which have been used. The copper pots with their dents and flattened edges The knives and forks whose wooden handles Have been worn away by many hands: such forms Seemed to me the noblest.

The shrill voices of those who give orders Are full of fear like the squeakings of Piglets awaiting the butcher’s knife, as their fat arses Sweat with anxiety in their office chairs…. Fear rules not only those who are ruled, but The rulers too.

Memories do not always soften with time; some grow edges like knives.

I have the greatest picture of Ted [Danson]. That was a big caper,

Your mind now, moldering like wedding-cake, heavy with useless experience, rich with suspicion, rumour, fantasy, crumbling to pieces under the knife-edge of mere fact. In the prime of your life.

In the midst of our applauding the feats of civilization, the Bible flings itself like a knife slashing our complacency; remind us that God, too, has a voice in history.