For a time I would feel I belonged still to a world of straightforward facts; but the feeling would not last long. Something would turn up to scare it away.

Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men.

The air of the New World seems favorable to the art of declamation.

It is not the clear-sighted who rule the world. Great achievements are accomplished in a blessed, warm fog.

I don't like work... but I like what is in work - the chance to find yourself. Your own reality - for yourself, not for others - which no other man can ever know.

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.

We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness

If you don't make mistakes, you don't make anything .

There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea.

To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot.

They talk of a man betraying his country, his friends, his sweetheart. There must be a moral bond first. All a man can betray is his conscience.

There is nothing perfect...only life.

Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.

We look wishfully to emergencies, to eventful, revolutionary times...and think how easy to have taken our part when the drum was rolling and the house was burning over our heads. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you've got a big gut and you start doing sit-ups, you are going to get bigger because you build up the muscle. You've got to get rid of that fat! How do you get rid of fat? By changing your diet.

[Afghanistan and Iraq] are still countries that are fragile enough that we're gonna have to partner with them in some way.

If you want to touch the other shore badly enough, barring an impossible situation, you will. If your desire is diluted for any reason, you'll never make it.

I am opposed to socialism because it dreams ingenuously of good, truth, beauty, and equal rights.

If you don't ask, the answer is always no.

Writing is almost a place of dreams for me, and I don't have to give up anything to do it.