I don't just want my books to be about the '30s and '40s. I want them to read as if they had been written then. I think of them as '40s novels, written in the conservative narrative past.

Politicians were like talking dogs in a circus: the fact that they existed was uncommonly interesting, but no sane person would actually believe what they said

Whether you like it or not, Paris is the beating heart of Western civilisation. It's where it all began and ended.

You can't make accommodations in crucial situations and be heroic.

Wherever God has planted you, you must know how to flower - translated from a French saying

If you can live in Paris, maybe you should.

Live today, for tomorrow we die.

I have a very serious censorship office inside my head; it censors things that I could tell you that you would never forget, and I don't want to be the person to stick that in your brain.

The best Paris I know now is in my head.

Once you have your characters, they tell you what to write, you don't tell them.

One is what one has the nerve to pretend to be.

A person is wise if he listens to millions of advice and doesn't implement any of it.

Your empowerment remains Soulfully supported from within.

Women of forty always fancy they have found the Fountain of Youth, and that they remain young in the midst of the ruins of their day.

Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it each day, and at last we cannot break it.

Elegance is a question of personality, more than one's clothing.

I do actually use a boxing trainer when I train for stand-up.

In the next life you will be working with those attitudes that are now yours.

Without love of the land, conservation lacks meaning or purpose, for only in a deep and inherent feeling for the land can there be dedication in preserving it.

As W.C. Fields once said: a thing worth having is a thing worth cheating for.

Living is giving....If you spend your money on yourself, you are just surviving. But if you want your life to count, if you want to really live - give.