“Children internalize their parents’ unhappiness. Fortunately, they absorb our contentment just as readily.”

Some of the most gifted people I’ve ever met or read about are homosexual. How can you knock it?

You see much more of your children once they leave home.

Luck? I don’t know anything about luck. I’ve never banked on it and I’m afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: Hard work – and realizing what is opportunity and what isn’t.

It wasn’t love at first sight. It took a full five minutes.

Responsibility is the ability to respond.

I believe that we’re as happy in life as we make up our minds to be.

I would rather regret the things that I have done than the things that I have not.

Whether we’re prepared or not, life has a habit of thrusting situations upon us.

I regret the passing of the studio system. I was very appreciative of it because I had no talent.

I hate failure and that divorce was a Number One failure in my eyes. It was the worst period of my life. Neither Desi nor I have been the same since, physically or mentally.

Use a make-up table with everything close at hand and don’t rush; otherwise you’ll look like a patchwork quilt.

One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn’t pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself.

Love yourself first and the rest of your life will fall into place.

In life, all good things come hard, but wisdom is the hardest to come by.

Ability is of little account without opportunity.

It’s a helluva start, being able to recognize what makes you happy.

I’m just a shy and retreating kind of person. Sometimes I get in a real talkative mood – but not very often.

Sometimes when I visit my sister and her two children, I wonder if she missed a lot by getting married. Right now, nothing could be further from my mind than getting married.

My mom loves saris, and when I was a child, she told me ‘a girl looks good in an Indian traditional outfit.’ So, somehow it stayed in my head, and I really enjoy Indian wear.

I love kids with a passion I usually reserve for hot cheese, miniature chairs, and Prince concerts, but I feel no stress to reproduce simply because of a fear of withering eggs.

The difference between the child and the man lies chiefly in the unlimited confidence and buoyancy of youth.

The best way would be education and kids and all that stuff and then education and working education comes through. Then I started a music school and the music school now teaches kids to play the violin and the viola.

The whole dating ritual was different when I was a kid. Girls got pinned, not nailed.

I’m sad for adults who want to be children. And children who want to be adults.