I am 46, and have been for some time past.

Real love is a pilgrimage. It happens when there is no strategy, but it is very rare because most people are strategists.

Good women always think it is their fault when someone else is being offensive. Bad women never take the blame for anything.

Time misspent in youth is sometimes all the freedom one ever has.

Romanticism is not just a mode; it literally eats into every life. Women will never get rid of just waiting for the right man.

Accountability in friendship is the equivalent of love without strategy.

Always let them think of you as singing and dancing.

You never know what you will learn till you start writing. Then you discover truths you never knew existed.

The essence of romantic love is that wonderful beginning, after which sadness and impossibility may become the rule.

Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.

A man of such obvious and exemplary charm must be a liar.

Throughout the day, anytime you find yourself feeling stressed or wanting to complain, stop for 10 seconds and breathe. Count your breaths and your blessings.

And when a whisper became a begging it was time to move on.

There is a wheel on the affairs of men revolve and its mechanism is such that it prevents any man from being always fortunate.

If you're very liberal, then you should go and find a very liberal Zen teacher, a liberal interpretation of the doctrines of the Soto or Rinzai schools.

But as well may you, when urging a man up-hill with a heavy load upon his back, and with your lash also upon his back, tell him, that be has nothing to do either with the load or the lash.

A collection of good books, with a soul to it in the shape of a librarian, becomes a vitalized power among the impulses by which the world goes on to improvement.

We are who we're going to be when we're very old, and when we're very old we are who we were when we were 8.

I'm very used to working with first time actors - you can just look back at 'E.T.' with Drew Barrymore, and Christian Bale from 'Empire of the Sun,' who'd never made a movie before.

The wheel that squeaks gets the oil.

Writers are a fascinating breed, because there are so many kinds of them, they are made by so many circumstances, conditions, and mysteries, and there are so many ways for writing to be done.