“Deep breaths are very helpful at shallow parties.”

It would be nice to feel that we are a better world, a world of more compassion and a world of more humanity, and to believe in the basic goodness of man.

No one could ad lib like Peter. You would think that it was all scripted, he was so poetic, but it wasn’t.

New York is a galaxy of adventure at once elegant, exciting and bizarre. It’s a city that moves so fast, it takes energy just to stand still.

Don’t confuse being stimulating with being blunt.

Success can make you go one of two ways. It can make you a prima donna – or it can smooth the edges, take away the insecurities, let the nice things come out.

If you were a tree, what kind would you be?

Life sometimes brings enormous difficulties and challenges that seem just too hard to bear. But bear them you can, and bear them you will, and your life can have a purpose.

Small children do not belong at an adult party, and especially should not be used like trained midgets to help serve martinis.

Show me someone who never gossips, and I’ll show you someone who isn’t interested in people.

[On being indecisive and changeable:] On my gravestone I want inscribed: ‘On the other hand, maybe I should have lived.

Homogeneity is much to be admired – in milk, for instance – but not for parties.

A good laugh makes any interview, or any conversation, so much better.

If it’s a woman it’s caustic, if it’s a man it’s authority, If it’s a woman it’s too pushy, if it’s a man it’s aggressive in the best sense of the word.

A conversation isn’t a competition.

This is what I tell, especially young women, fight the big fights. Don’t fight the little fight… Be the first one in, be the last one out. Do your homework, choose your battles. Don’t whine, and don’t be the one who complains about everything. Fight the big fight.

Most old people … are disheartened to be living in the ailing house of their bodies, to be limited physically and economically, to feel an encumbrance to others – guests who didn’t have the good manners to leave when the party was over.

There is always something new out of Africa.

New beginnings and new shoots Spring again from hidden roots Pull or stab or cut or burn, Love must ever yet return.

As your mother tells you, and my mother certainly told me, it is important, she always used to say, always to try new things.

I love disco and we sample it a lot for Duck Sauce. For me, that sound is kind of a new manifestation.

All those things that are now field to be of the greatest antiquity were at one time new; what we to-day hold up by example will rank hereafter as precedent.

Denying racism is the new racism.

Black don’t crack: It does bruise, though. It does rupture into a new sky.

I’ve only ever wanted to be new.