I could meet dreadful people and end up seeing the world through their eyes, seeing their frailties, their needs.

That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing. It is my way of judging what I am doing - which is never an easy thing to do.

The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.

One isn’t born one’s self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people’s ideas – and you have to work through it all.

Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision.

It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That's where the mischief starts. That's where everything starts unravelling.

The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.

Home is, I suppose just a child's idea. A house at night, and a lamp in the house. A place to feel safe.

One always writes comedy at the moment of deepest hysteria.

The world is always in movement.

All the details of the life and the quirks and the friendships can be laid out for us, but the mystery of the writing will remain. No amount of documentation, however fascinating, can take us there.

So if there is something on the planet that is worth living for, I'd better not miss it, because once you're dead, it's too late for regrets, and if you die by mistake, that is really, really dumb.

You should wake up in the morning and say, 'What do I want to do today? What's going to make me happy?'

And this is one of the major questions of our lives: how we keep boundaries, what permission we have to cross boundaries, and how we do so.

There isa stigma associated with incontinence, so many people never mention it to their doctors or seek treatment. In reality, fecal incontinence is a very common and often very treatable condition.

I never met a chocolate I could not eat.

One may ride upon a tiger's back but it is fatal to dismount.

Our early lessons in love and our developmental history shape the expectations we bring into marriage.

Work before eating, rest after eating. Eat not ravenously, filling the mouth gulp after gulp without breathing space.

Beginners are many; finishers are few.

I like involved projects. I'm driven by the idea of characters and the song-cycle form is similar to a musical.