A person who has no secrets is a liar. We always fold ourselves away from others just enough to preserve a secret or two, something that we cannot share without destroying our inner landscape.

A woman whose smile is open and whose expression is glad has a kind of beauty no matter what she wears.

Grief is in two parts. The first is loss. The second is the remaking of life.

Some people who think they are in unhappy marriages are just in unhappy bodies.

People always tell me either A. you love him. B. you hate him. My usual answer? C. All of the above.

I am not a perfect friend, and it is impossible not to rebuff or be rebuffed if you move about the world.

I've told the same story twelve different ways, but I think that's just part of what writers do. Once may not be enough.

What other people think of me is not really my major concern in life. What other people think of what I write is another matter.

I have two writer daughters, and a psychoanalyst daughter, and a lawyer daughter, and they wish we didn't write, I'm sure, but we write. If we were a painting family, we would paint.

You really can't say things that upset someone in print and expect them to be nice and leave you their money. That's just not reasonable.

Reader, you forget that economics precedes religion; worship grew out of eating, not the other way around.

The thought is just as strong as the consequence.

If a cop sees a person running out of a store with a gun he's seeing a crime. He's not seeing a person standing.

With classic sitcoms like MASH, the characters all drove each other crazy, and that's what you loved to see.

I was very sensitive. I liked everything that touched fantasy and beauty. I dreamed of being a ballerina, but Mother said I was too big, too long.

Take the emotional temperature of those listening to you. Facial expressions, voice inflection and posture give clues to a person's mood and attitude.

What deep wounds ever closed without a scar?

He who tries to forget a woman, never loved her

Only mediocrities progress. An artist revolves in a cycle of masterpieces, the first of which is no less perfect than the last.

Life was a wheel, its only job was to turn, and it always came back to where it started.

I wish I was as cocksure of anything as Tom Macaulay is of everything.