Children live in the same world we do. To kid ourselves that we can shelter them from it isn't just naive it's a vanity.

A lot of people get so hung up on what they can't have that they don't think for a second about whether they really want it.

You can call it innocence, or you can call it gullibility, but Celia made the most common mistake of the good-hearted: she assumed that everyone else was just like her.

My own apathy is bone chilling.

In a country that doesn't discriminate between fame and infamy, the latter presents itself as plainly more achievable.

Funny how you dig yourself into a hole by the teaspoon.

It's far less important to me to be liked these days than to be understood.

But what's so great about being a perfectionist?... You do all this work, and then the stuff you've made just pisses you off.

Giving anyone anything takes courage, since so many presents backfire. A gift conspicuously at odds with your tastes serves only to betray that the benefactor has no earthly clue who you are.

Reading time is precious. Don't waste it. Reading bad books, or books that are wrong for a certain time in your life, can dangerously turn you off the activity altogether.

The Web, the great time-killer that had replaced conspicuously passive television with its seductive illusion of productivity.

Art teaches something we all need to learn, especially about people who are different from ourselves: "To see things the way they truly are, sometimes you have to look more deeply.

Cease your insults to God, quit consulting flesh and blood. Stop your lame, lying, and cowardly excuses. Enlist!

The wish to lead out one's lover must be a tribal feeling; the wish to be seen as loved is part of one's self-respect.

You can be fat and still be sexy . It all depends on how you feel about yourself

By patting somebody on the back, a boy or a girl, a professional dancer, male, female, it really makes people feel good and I know it certainly made me feel good.

Beauty is the mind, heart and balls of the person seeking to be beautiful.

I'm one, too," he said. "What?" He spit a wad of blood and mucus into the dirt. "A virgin." What a shock. "What makes you think I'm a virgin?" I asked. "You wouldn't have hit me if you weren't.

When discouragement comes, don't stop. Dig deep and fight it through!

Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake.

I don't rate them, I just hit them.