A kindly gesture bestowed by us on an animal arouses prodigies of understanding and gratitude.

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.

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

If I can't have too many truffles, I'll do without truffles.

I believe there are more urgent and honorable occupations than the incomparable waste of time we call suffering.

Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.

I love my past, I love my present. I am not ashamed of what I have had, and I am not sad because I no longer have it.

You must not pity me because my sixtieth year finds me still astonished. To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly.

Never touch a butterfly's wing with your finger.

By an image we hold on to our lost treasures, but it is the wrenching loss that forms the image, composes, binds the bouquet.

A woman who thinks she is intelligent demands the same rights as man. An intelligent woman gives up.

In short, philosophical theories are largely the product of the hidden hand of the cognitive unconscious.

...nothing helps a lie float like a hopeful listener.

Recklessness is almost a man's revenge on his woman.

Jewish vampires: blood can’t be kosher… can it?

What’s fair and what’s true often bear no resemblance to each other.

All real change requires risk. You must take risks every day of your life. You must get up each morning and ask...: What can I do that is different?

To make the bloody thing talk the way I do when I'm on a verbal roll, in my idioms and rhythms.

I'VE LEARNED THAT YOU CAN'T CONTROL WHAT OTHER PEOPLE ARE GOING TO THINK ABOUT YOU. THE BEST YOU CAN DO IN LIFE IS NOT PISS YOURSELF OFF.

You can't act like you care about someone but not let them care about you.

The best time to listen to a politician is when he's on a stump on a street corner in the rain late at night when he's exhausted. Then he doesn't lie.