I despised their antics because I took life seriously and had a much more lofty and tender notion of romance. But I would have liked to get their attention just the same.

You cannot let your parents anywhere near your real humiliations.

The complexity of things - the things within things - just seems to be endless. I mean nothing is easy, nothing is simple.

Always remember that when a man goes out of the room, he leaves everything in it behind. When a woman goes out she carries everything that happened in the room along with her.

I would really hope this would make people see the short story as an important art, not just something you played around with until you got a novel.

The conversation of kisses. Subtle, engrossing, fearless, transforming.

In your life there are a few places, or maybe only the one place, where something happened, and then there are all the other places.

We say of some things that they can't be forgiven, or that we will never forgive ourselves. But we do-we do it all the time.

My head was a magpie's nest lined with such bright scraps of information.

Love removes the world for you, and just as surely when it's going well as when it's going badly.

Life would be grand if it weren't for the people.

Hope is one of the principal springs that keep mankind in motion.

I owe my life to my father. I remember that my first Christmas present was a ball. In the district where we lived, there weren't many kids who had one.

I don't want to be Prime Minister of England, I want to be Prime Minister of the whole of the United Kingdom.

No man ever did or can do a great work alone.

The power to console is not within corporeal reach - though its attempt is precious.

My job is to just express something that I want to express. And if I'm ahead or behind the curve, that's for others to decide.

She smiled at him, with longing. 'Where do you live,' she asked, 'and how do I get there?

I went to America and got into a band, had success, had hits in Australia.

An artist is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artist takes it personally.

There's a general culture in this country to cut all the trees. It makes me so angry because everyone is cutting and no one is planting.