After I became a citizen, I felt freer to say what I thought about this country, both negative and positive. I think I had been, consciously and subconsciously, biting my tongue in the past.

You learn, just as you learn good manners, how to approach things with a certain amount of diplomacy.

Words make another place, a place to escape to with your spirit alone.

Parents can plant magic in a child's mind through certain words spoken with some thrilling quality of voice, some uplift of the heart and spirit.

The greatest luxury is being able to go to movies and plays now and then in the afternoons.

Change is legitimate and inevitable, for our language is a mighty river, picking up silt and flotsam here and discarding it there, but growing ever wider and richer.

I am not really retired, and may never be completely, but I can't think of a better place to contemplate retirement than New York City.

Yes, after some time spent last year on other commitments, most of them speaking engagements, I am now about halfway through a novel that I hope will come out in 1998.

Wordstruck is exactly what I was—and still am: crazy about the sound of words, the look of words, the taste of words, the feeling for words on the tongue and in the mind.

Television has created a nation of news junkies who tune in every night to get their fix on the world.

I'm happy to have my own opinion and air it when I think it's necessary.

Be true to thine own self

Women must pay for everything. They do get more glory than men for comparable feats, but, they also get more notoriety when they crash.

'Blazing Saddles' is one of the funniest movies ever made.

I either eat too much or starve myself. Sleep for 14 hours or have insomniac nights. Fall in love very hard or hate passionately. I don't know what grey is. I never did.

I always liked film as a teaching tool - a way of getting exposed to ideas that had never been presented to me. It just wasn't on the list of career options where I grew up.

I think we've all got a mirror man in our life - male, female, it's someone who love themselves before they can love anyone else.

You will survive anything if you live your life from the point of view of truth.

Death is the side of life which is turned away from us.

Cats are a tonic, they are a laugh, they are a cuddle, they are at least pretty just about all of the time and beautiful some of the time.

What now? (Shahara) I’m thinking. (Syn) Could you think a little quicker? (Shahara) You’re not helping. (Syn) You’re lucky you’re still breathing and not limping. (Shahara)