“Life was life. It happened. You never knew what was going to come at you. Or how you could defend yourself.”

Elizabeth studied the blurry tabloid photo, which showed her cousin Mary Stuart leaving a Paris disco at dawn, drunkenly clinging to the arm of a French tennis pro. The message was very clear. Put passion first and you end up neither loved nor respected.

My dear girl, you must cultivate a taste for the finer things. Civilized pleasures give meaning to life.

Priceless things matter not for their value, but because they offer us an enduring reminder of stability and permanence.

Even the most powerful woman needs a place to unwind.

When you are a strong woman, you will attract trouble. When a man feels threatened, there is always trouble.

The past was always there, lived inside of you, and it helped to make you who you were. But it had to be placed in perspective. The past could not dominate the future.

In my opinion, moderation is a vastly overrated virtue, particularly when applied to work

I will never stop writing. People often ask when I will retire, but I say it’s none of their business. Writing defines who I am. I love the feeling of holding a finished book in my hands, and then I can’t wait to start the great adventure of writing the next one.

Elizabeth lay face-down on the massage table, and allowed Marco to relieve the stress of the business day with firm and knowing fingers. Success, she decided, was often a matter of knowing when to relax.

He who ascends to mountaintops, shall find The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow; He who surpasses or subdues mankind Must look down on the hate of those below

The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make to them; a man may live long, yet get little from life. Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will – Montaigne, Essays

She put her hand in his, and he clasped it firmly, knowing he had been waiting for her all his life.

A person with taste is merely one who can recognize the greatest beauty in the simplest things.

Always present yourself as a woman who expects to succeed.

At the age of fifty-six Eleanor Stoddard was still a beautiful woman. She owned three hotels in France and another two in England. From nothing at all, she had built an empire. Eleanor had it all. Her one weakness was the young man sleeping beside her.

Life always gets harder towards the summit – the cold increases, responsibility increases

Don’t worry about bad things that haven’t happened yet. It will save you a lot of anxiety.

I think there’s a lot of evolution that’s happened in intangible ways, in terms of how I think about the work or how I plan it out.

I had to find a way to be more honest about what happened. And it wasn’t fun to write, even though the poems aren’t 100% autobiographical.

We’re a long way from the embargo ending. Look at what just happened with the rollback of Obama’s Cuba policies. Two idiot congressmen convinced our idiot president to make it harder on Cubans on the island.

I knew all the time I was going to get through the war. It was completely irrational, a silly idea, but I was not going to lie down and get myself killed. I was going to get out of it.

I mean, nothing ever really happened with ’em, but I enjoy getting a young band into the studio and guiding them, and making them feel at ease.

What I love about doing my concerts is always feeding off the fans and their energy.

The job at Brooklyn is interesting because Brooklyn reflects what happened to university art departments everywhere. It might be the worst department now, and yet at one point it was the best in the country.