How can we not create a fantasy in our minds when the reality is so hard?

Having a baby is painful in order to show how serious a thing life is.

Gone were my girlish ideas about romantic love and my later ideas about sexual love. From Yi, I learned to appreciate deep-heart love. Peony in Love

I am old enough to know only too well my good and bad qualities, which were often one in the same.

Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river.

Seeing something once is better than hearing about it a hundred times. Doing something once is better than seeing it a hundred times.

Don't ever feel that you have to hide who you are. Nothing good ever comes from keeping secrets like that.

We're told that men are strong & brave, but I think women know how to endure, accept defeat & bear physical & mental agony much better than men.

He was in my hair, my eyes, my fingers, my heart. I day-dreamed about what he was doing, thinking, seeing, smelling, feeling. I could not eat for thoughts of him.

People come in and out of our lives, and the true test of friendship is whether you can pick back up right where you left off the last time you saw each other.

While she is lovely, we need to remember that her face is not what distinguishes her. Her beauty is a reflection of the virtue and talent she keeps inside.

Would it be better to feel afraid all the time or to feel nothing at all? She hadn't decided yet.

All that pain of craving somewhere deep inside which lies in wait for one glimpse.

New Rule #1 – Don't date women who paint. Arty-farty doesn't just equal freaky in the sack, it also equals nasty genius revenge. I don't like genius when it's happening to me.

What makes a nation great is not primarily its great men but the stature of its innumerable mediocre ones.

We are here to spend ourselves on others; for each person is a great treasure.

The truth I do not dare to know I muffle with a jest.

Forms of government are forged mainly in the fire of practice, not in the vacuum of theory. They respond to national character and to national realities.

I'm Italian, but some people think I'm Jewish because I work the Yiddish. I also work the Italian, by the way.

Freedom is an abstract offshoot. You can't describe freedom. How can you describe it? I tried and I failed.

Don't feel bad for one moment about doing what brings you joy.