Everything is worse...if you think something is looking at you.

I never was a person who wanted a handout. I was a cafeteria worker. I'm not too proud to ask the Best Western manager to give me a job. I have cleaned homes.

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.

I very much dislike writing about myself or my work, and when pressed for autobiographical material can only give a bare chronological outline which contains no pertinent facts.

Materializations are often best produced in rooms where there are books. I cannot think of any time when materialization was in any way hampered by the presence of books.

So long as you write it away regularly nothing can really hurt you.

Fear," the doctor said, "is the relinquishment of logic, the willing relinquishing of reasonable patterns. We yield to it or we fight it, but we cannot meet it halfway.

I have always loved to use fear, to take it and comprehend it and make it work and consolidate a situation where I was afraid and take it whole and work from there.

I delight in what I fear.

The sight of one's own heart is degrading; people are not meant to look inward - that's why they've been given bodies, to hide their souls.

We eat the year away. We eat the spring and the summer and the fall. We wait for something to grow and then we eat it.

Water has no mouth, but swallows many. Light has no hands, but touches many. Wind has no feet, but carries many. Darkness has no teeth, but devours many.

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.

It takes a sour woman to make a good pickle.

If one cannot invent a really convincing lie it is often better to stick to the truth.

I don't do a lot of political jokes. Too many are getting elected.

I learned that a real friendship is not about what you can get, but what you can give. Real friendship is about making sacrifices and investing in people to help them improve their lives.

The good Lord set definite limits on man's wisdom, but set no limits on his stupidity.

Sometimes pain is easier to bear alone than happiness.

I want to get out of the major opera houses.

Maturity, as I conceived it, was recognizing what was bad or peculiar in life, admitting it has to stay that way, and going ahead with the best of things.