All natural disasters are comforting because they reaffirm our impotence, in which, otherwise, we might stop believing. At times it is strangely sedative to know the extent of your own powerlessness.

You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.

And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.

I have accepted fear as a part of life - specifically the fear of change... I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back.

The stones themselves are thick with history, and those cats that dash through the alleyways must surely be the ghosts of the famous dead in feline disguise.

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.

Ambivalence is a wonderful tune to dance to. It has a rhythm all its own.

Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.

How wonderful to have someone to blame! How wonderful to live with one's nemesis! You may be miserable, but you feel forever in the right.

My generation was not only maligned in book reviews and attacked in graduate school but we lived to see our adored and adorable daughters wonder why feminism had become a dirty word.

In the 40, 000 year time scale we're all the same people. We're all equally primitive, give or take two or three thousand years here or a hundred years there.

Temptation exercises our faith and teaches us to pray.

The object and practice of liberty lies in the limitation of government power.

Every blue-stocking will remain a spinster as long as there are sensible men on the earth. [Fr., Toute fille lettree restera fille toute sa vie, quand il n'y aura que des hommes senses sur la terre.]

A career is a wonderful thing, but you can't snuggle up to it at night.

You don't make art, you find it

I've always believed that true cinema is cinema of the imagination.

Those who claim to have had happy lives seem to be silly fools.

The heart, when it is too much alive, aches for that brown earth, and ecstasy has no fear of death.

There is no virtue in curiosity. In fact, it might be the most immoral desire a man can possess.