“What is the most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine.”

Societies need to have one illness which becomes identified with evil, and attaches blame to its victims.

Real art has the capacity to make us nervous.

My idea of a writer: someone interested in everything.

Shouting has never made me understand anything.

Fear of sexuality is the new, disease-sponsored register of the universe of fear in which everyone now lives.

I want to be able to be alone, to find it nourishing – not just a waiting.

I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.

A good book is an education of the heart. It enlarges your sense of human possibility what human nature is of what happens in the world. It’s a creator of inwardness.

Self-respect. It would make me lovable. And it’s the secret to good sex.

Art is a form of consciousness.

Literature can train, and exercise, our ability to weep for those who are not us or ours.

One can never ask anyone to change a feeling.

Being in love means being willing to ruin yourself for the other person.

The painter constructs, the photographer discloses.

Time exists in order that everything doesn’t happen all at once, and space exists so that it doesn’t all happen to you.

The fear of becoming old is born of the recognition that one is not living now the life that one wishes.

Strength looks beautiful on you, keep going.

There is nothing more beautiful than seeing a person being themselves. Imagine going through your day being unapologetically you.

Not being beautiful was the true blessing. Not being beautiful forced me to develop my inner resources. The pretty girl has a handicap to overcome.

The right hairstyle can make a plain woman beautiful and a beautiful woman unforgettable.

Flowers often grow more beautifully on dung-hills than in gardens that look beautifully kept.

It’s necessary, at some point, to destroy your beauty.

There’s beauty in the silver singing river There’s beauty in the sunrise in the sky But none of these and nothing else can match the beauty That I remember in my true love’s eyes

Circling the earth in the orbital spaceship I marvelled at the beauty of our planet. People of the world!! Let us safeguard and enhance this beauty-not destroy it