“Neither look forward where there is doubt nor backward where there is regret.”

I never spend my time doing anything I’ll have to do again tomorrow.

Nothing more rapidly inclines a person to go into a monastery than reading a book on etiquette. There are so many trivial ways in which it is possible to commit some social sin.

If you truly love me, kill the bartender.

I would have run all the way and I would have gone up to the largest and leatheriest of the denizens and said: If you truly love me, kill the bartender.

The formula for achieving a successful relationship is simple: you should treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster.

One should always be wary of anyone who promises that their love will last longer than a weekend.

Manners are a way of getting what you want without appearing to be an absolute swine.

The trouble with European cities is that they are drenched in their history, almost all of which is terrible.

My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.

Look inward and ask not if there is anything outside you want, but whether there is anything inside that you have not yet unpacked.

I don’t really act. I say the words the way I would say them if I meant them.

To my disappointment I now realized that to know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody.

I went out into the world when I was about 22. I wrote books and I illustrated books and did book covers, and I taught tap-dancing, and I was a model in the art school. I had no ability for any of those things, but what else could I do?

If at first you don’t succeed, failure may be your style.

What would you be like if you were the only person in the world? If you want to be truly happy you must be that person.

I’ve never not been famous.

In life you are either growing or rotting. You’re moving forward or backwards; there is no standing still.

The Dharma Path is to keep walking forward. But the true Dharma has no going forward, no going backward, and no standing still.

Take one step backward into the unknown.

It’s like the mountains, the ocean and the rivers. It has its own geological forms. Societies cannot be flat. But during change, human rights, human dignity and free speech have to be protected. Otherwise, we’ll be going backward.

There is no illusion so permanent as that which enables us to look backward with complacency; there is no mental process so deceptive as the comparing of recollections with realities.

If everybody floated with the tide of talk, placidity would soon end in stagnation. It is the strong backward stroke which stirs the ripples, and gives animation and variety.

There are those who say that children make a rich man poor. No, they have it backward.

It won’t be decided in one election, but it is a basic choice between an open and progressive Iraq and one that is backward and continues to fall behind.