“I am neither Christian enough nor charitable enough to like anybody just because he is alive and breathing. I want people to interest or amuse me. I want them fascinating and witty or so dul as to be different.”

I want them either intellectually stimulating or wonderfully corny; perfectly charming or hundred percent stinker.

Our little room was morbidly quiet and sorrow was heaped in my corner like dirty snow.

I like my chosen companions to be distinguishable from the undulating masses and I don’t care how.

In the country Sunday is the day on which you do exactly as much work as you do on other days but feel guilty all the time you are doing it because Sunday is a day of rest.

There’s nothing as cozy as a piece of candy and a book.

a grudge will soon rot the pocket you carry it in.

I’ll do it because I want to but not because you tell me to!

In the country, weather is as important as food and sometimes means the difference between life and death.

Almost anybody would rather be known for expert shoe-tying than for kicking the cat.” She always tells whiners how charming they are–bullies how brave–bad sports how good–sneaks how honest!

Greed is a basic part of animal nature. Being against it is like being against breathing or eating. It means nothing.

I still perform it in all my shows. I’ll do it as long as I’m breathing. I’m so proud it has stood the test of time.

Acting isn’t a side thing – you have to live and breathe it.

The breath must be enticed or cajoled, like catching a horse in a field, not by chasing after it, but by standing still with an apple in one’s hand.

How to sustain the miracle Of being, that like a muted bell, Or like some ocean-breathing shell, Quivers, intense and still?

WE HAVE SEEN that hunger and breathing are desires of the body. There are other desires that are not of the body, but again man seldom pauses to observe these desires in himself.

Passion is not a quality that is foreign to you. It is not a characteristic that some people are born with and some must do without. To be passionate is as natural to you as breathing, as natural as being alive. It is the source of who you are.

A cigarette is a breathing space. It makes a parenthesis.