Duty is whatever opposes inclination.

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.

There is no way to counterfeit courage

The beautiful thing about calling out to your Lord is that you don't always have to put your feelings into words

Do work of all kinds with a mind that is void and to the voidness surrender all of the fruits.

Teenage boys, goaded by their surging hormones run in packs like the primal horde. They have only a brief season of exhilarating liberty between control by their mothers and control by their wives.

In our case, finding a Lucy is unique. No one will ever find another Lucy. You can't order one from a biological supply house. It's a unique discovery, a unique specimen.

Verily, God hath eighteen thousand worlds; and verily, your world is one of them, and this its bright axle-tree.

It is for the artist... in portrait painting to put on canvas something more than the face the model wears for that one day; to paint the man, in short, as well as his features.

I think one day I want to be on the other side of the camera-maybe directing

One wants to be able to experience being other people, remaking a reality, remaking a life, remaking a certain world.

All my life I've been terrible at remembering people's names. I once introduced a friend of mine as Martini. Her name was actually Olive.