He was a natural, and in the Russian way, tragically above these banalities.

I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn't of much value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them.

When a great moment knocks on the door of your life, it is often no louder than the beating of your heart, and it is very easy to miss it.

Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.

Man is born to live, not to prepare for life.

The writer is the Faust of modern society, the only surviving individualist in a mass age. To his orthodox contemporaries he seems a semi-madman.

To be a woman is a great adventure; To drive men mad is a heroic thing.

Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.

They don't ask much of you. They only want you to hate the things you love and to love the things you despise.

In life it is more necessary to lose than to gain. A seed will only germinate if it dies.

And why is it, thought Lara, that my fate is to see everything and take it all so much to heart?

Spirituality does not lie in meditating the body of an ex-master. Spirituality exists in mediating on your own inner body.

The world of research has gone berserk. Too much paper work.

Have I yet to learn that the hardest and best-borne trials are those which are never chronicled in any earthly record, and are suffered every day!

Let go of what you think you need & what you really need will show up.

Acting is glamour but writing is hard work, so I'm going to be an actress.

You can't delegate growth or customer satisfaction.

Obama's Nobel Peace Prize is an exquisite act of condescension from Norwegians, a dog biscuit and a pat on the head to the American hyperpower for agreeing to spay itself into a hyperpoodle.

You are trying not only to reach your potential but to move beyond it. If you are not in the best shape you can be, these things simply become more difficult to achieve.

In war, practice dissimulation and you will succeed.

To tell her that I joined the parachute club was too hard for me. I didn't want to trouble her; besides, I was not completely sure about the success of my new adventure.