But Sasha was from Russia, where the sunsets are longer, the dawns less sudden and sentences are often left unfinished from doubt as how to best end them.

Love, the poet said, is woman's whole existence.

Better was it to go unknown and leave behind you an arch, then to burn like a meteor and leave no dust.

He who robs us of our dreams robs us of our life.

. . . clumsiness is often mated with a love of solitude.

As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.

Nothing thicker than a knife's blade separates happiness from melancholy.

Vain trifles as they seem, clothes have, they say, more important offices than to merely keep us warm. They change our view of the world and the world's view of us.

By the truth we are undone. Life is a dream. 'Tis the waking that kills us. He who robs us of our dreams robs us of our life.

The flower bloomed and faded. The sun rose and sank. The lover loved and went. And what the poets said in rhyme, the young translated into practice.

Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice?

The acknowledgement of a single possibility can change everything.

I desire knowledge and wisdom.

To fight against the infidels is Jihad; but to fight against your evil self is greater Jihad.

Do you have any control over being conscious? Do you know how you will?

I never wanted money worries to slow me down or make me take a job I didn't want.

I have dogs in my house and much like teenagers at some point, they leave the parents. Even though they're in the same house, they live independently. I think that's how I live with the Chihuahuas.

The only way I can get a man to touch me at this age is plastic surgery.

I'm one of six kids, and the eight of us lived for over a decade in either a bus or a boat.

I had the most fantastic time filming 'Downton.'

I approach the heptathlon and life in the same way in that I not only want to be good at what I am doing, but I want it to mean something.