“No one will live all his life in the world into which he was born and no one will die in the world in which he worked in his maturity.”

A woman, even a brilliant woman, must have two qualities in order to fulfill her promise: more energy than mere mortals, and the ability to outwit her culture.

And when our baby stirs and struggles to be born it compels humility: what we began is now its own.

Laughter is man’s most distinctive emotional expression. Man shares the capacity for love and hate, anger and fear, loyalty and grief, with other living creatures. But humour, which has an intellectual as well as an emotional element belongs to man

Life in the twentieth century is like a parachute jump: you have to get it right the first time.

Once any group in society stands in a relatively deprived position in relation to other groups, it is genuinely deprived.

There is no hierarchy of values by which one culture has the right to insist on all its own values and deny those of another.

The anonymity of the city is one of its strengths as well as – carried too far – one of its weaknesses.

Pigs and cows and chickens and people are all competing for grain.

Sister is probably the most competitive relationship within the family, but once the sisters are grown, it becomes the strongest relationship.

There is no greater power in the world than the zest of a postmenopausal woman.

I think rigid heterosexuality is a perversion of nature.

What people say, what people do, and what they say they do are entirely different things.

Jealousy is not a barometer by which the depth of love can be read. It merely records the degree of the lover’s insecurity.

‎ When a person is born we rejoice, and when they’re married we jubilate, but when they die we try to pretend nothing has happened.

we came to realize that a civilization which rode roughshod over the way of life of other peoples was incorporating evil in its own way of life.

Fathers are biological necessities, but social accidents.

Maturity is the ability to do a job whether you’re supervised or not; finish a job once it’s started; carry money without spending it; and the ability to bear an injustice without wanting to get even.

Mixtape’ is a very appropriate word to include in the title of Goran Hugo Olsson’s film because it includes a rich mixture of cultural voices.

They speak across different dividing lines such as those of haves and have-nots, youth and maturity, black and white, national and global, and the past and the present.

Heroism does not require spiritual maturity.

It seldom happens that a premature shoot of genius ever arrives at maturity.

Science is the outcome of being prepared to live without certainty and therefore a mark of maturity. It embraces doubt and loose ends.

I am beginning to consider myself stronger than all those around me, and you know that the good opinion I have of myself has only been reached after mature consideration.

In middle school, we are all so damn insecure. It was the worst time for me, really destructive, like slapping myself across the face but loving it. Now I have to be an adult and change myself. I have to be a bigger person.