Birth dates and bathroom scales tell more truth than I want to know.

Pain narrows consciousness; pleasure blurs it.

When Medusa looks in the mirror, she sees the Lady of Sorrows.

My passions have never jumped out of the fireplace and set fire to the carpet.

Retirement requires the invention of a new hedonism, not a return to the hedonism of youth

The sewing machine joins what the scissors have cut asunder, plus whatever else comes in its path.

Clothes make a statement. Costumes tell a story.

The laughter of the aphorism is sometimes triumphant, but seldom carefree.

'Be faithful to your roots' is the liberal version of 'Stay in your ghetto.'

Every day begins with an act of courage and hope: getting out of bed.

Totem poles and wooden masks no longer suggest tribal villages but fashionable drawing rooms in New York and Paris.

The universe is a million billion light-years wide, and every inch of it would kill you if you went there. This is the position of the universe with regards to human life.

If you're going to sit on someone's tombstone, you might as well know something about them, right?

The nature of revolutions is to sweep the reluctant along.

When you live positively it is impossible to not also be living for something greater than yourself.

Worry is absence of faith.

You know after any truly initiating experience that you are part of a much bigger whole. Life is not about you henceforward, but you are about life.

We cannot wait for governments to do it all. Globalization operates on Internet time. Governments tend to be slow moving by nature, because they have to build political support for every step.

I write all the time - I write poetry, I love to write.

Ibsen was Norwegian by birth, but universal in spirit.

The Scots are very hospitable; almost as hospitable as the Americans.