City wits, country humorists.

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.

I also smoked two cigarettes, which was pretty good considering I could have smoked five if I'd really tried.

An example would be handy right about now

We know that no one person can succeed unless everybody else succeeds.

Where riches hold the dominion of the heart, God has lost His authority.

I have any number of completely dark obsessions and fascinations, and none of this was present in my profile or my growing profile as a writer.

If you are carrying strong feelings about something that happened in your past, they may hinder your ability to live in the present.

If it is true that there is always more than one way of construing a text, it is not true that all interpretations are equal.

People who pay the price for security may never really feel secure rather the more their insecurity grows inside them because they are paying the price for action but not their internal reaction

Problems are rarely as bad as we think-or rather, they are precisely as bad as we think.

I can't destroy the whole army, and anyway [Tikka Khan] bad reputation for the events in Dacca is exaggerated.