“Perhaps the only misplaced curiosity is that which persists in trying to find out here, on this side of death, what lies beyond the grave.”

It is not a bad thing that children should occasionally, and politely, put parents in their place.

If he’s getting married, he’s not longer interesting.

I’ve entered the world of wine without any professional training, but a definite appetite for good bottles.

I have found my voice again and the art of using it.

We only do well the things we like doing.

A pretty little collection of weaknesses and a terror of spiders are our indispensable stock-in-trade with the men.

On this narrow planet, we have only the choice between two unknown worlds. One of them tempts us – ah! what a dream, to live in that! – the other stifles us at the first breath.

Never touch a butterfly’s wing with your finger.

Books, books, books. It was not that I read so much. I read and re-read the same ones. But all of them were necessary to me. Their presence, their smell, the letters of their titles, and the texture of their leather bindings.

One keeps forgetting old age up to the very brink of the grave.

As for an authentic villain, the real thing, the absolute, the artist, one rarely meets him even once in a lifetime. The ordinary bad hat is always in part a decent fellow.

The faults of husbands are often caused by the excess virtues of their wives.

Be happy. It’s one way of being wise.

Total absence of humor renders life impossible.

The day after that wedding night I found that a distance of a thousand miles, abyss and discovery and irremediable metamorphosis, separated me from the day before.

The true traveler is he who goes on foot, and even then, he sits down a lot of the time.

Life was a funny thing that happened to me on the way to the grave.

Having been an actor and a writer for so long – 20 years or so – I felt that it would be daft to go to one’s grave without having directed. It’s a natural extension of writing and acting, and so I knew it would happen one day.

But only a brief moment is granted to the brave one breath or two, whose wage is the long nights of the grave.

Tombs are the clothes of the dead and a grave is a plain suit; while an expensive monument is one with embroidery.

History says, ‘Don’t hope on this side of the grave.’

One keeps forgetting old age up to the very brink of the grave.

The Deads-men, the Deadmen, the Undeads-men, the Undeadmen, the Rots, the Rotters, the Dirts, the Dirty Ones, the Grayboys, the Eaten Brains, the Eating Brains, the Mersey Beaters, the Mersey Beaten, the Bloodless, the Graves, the Headstones, and the Liverpools of Blood.

She realized now wrong she’d been; the pali wasn’t a headstone and Kalaupapa wasn’t a grave.