All bad things are exaggerated in the middle of the night. When you lie awake, you only think of bad things.

A pier is a disappointed bridge; yet stare at it for long enough and you can dream it to the other side of the Channel.

Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books.

The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.

The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly.

The land of embarrassment and breakfast.

When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it.

History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.

What is the easiest, the most comfortable thing for a writer to do? To congratulate the society in which he lives: to admire its biceps, applaud its progress, tease it endearingly about its follies.

Some of the freckles I once loved are now closer to liver spots. But it’s still the eyes we look at, isn’t it? That’s where we found the other person, and find them still.

The more you learn, the less you fear. "Learn" not in the sense of academic study, but in the practical understanding of life.

Intelligence is overrated. Wisdom is under applied.

Femininity is your greatest power. Embrace it!

Happiness is a choice and a state of mind.

So you’ve made a friend. How sad for them.

You may be obliged to wage war, but not to use poisoned arrows.

According to Buddhist psychology most of our troubles stem from attachment to things that we mistakenly see as permanent.

Two Polish men at Halloween with burned faces. What happened? They were bobbing for french fries.

Men scanning the surface count the wicked happy; they see not the frightful dreams that crowd a bad man's pillow.

Now that's hard for many people to believe, given that the media image of a drug dealer is a black kid standing on the street corner with his pants sagging down.

But our hatred is almost indistinguishable from our love.