Fruitless striving breeds less despair than inaction.

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.

Children are a blessing. They are a happiness so sharp that it feels like pain.

The pleasure isn't in doing the thing

Miranda was dark, like a midnight sky. But as she fell, her eyes shone like stars themselves.

My fellow Americans, we are and always will be a nation of immigrants. We were strangers once, too.

Who often, but without success, have prayed for apt Alliteration's artful aid.

I'm losing myself trying to compete with everyone else, instead of just being me.

I asked God if it was a sin and He didn't say anything.

Phall if you but will, rise you must: and none so soon either shall the pharce for the nunce come to a setdown secular phoenish.

It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.

A spade may be made of any size, and if the same number of strokes be made in the hour, the requisite exertion will vary nearly as the cube of the length of the blade.