I have found that a story leaves a deeper impression when it is impossible to tell which side the author is on.

When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you'd like them to be.

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly.

Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.

A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction.

Everybody wants to change the world, but nobody thinks about changing himself.

Once we're thrown off our habitual paths, we think all is lost, but it's only here that the new and the good begins.

An arrogant person considers himself perfect. This is the chief harm of arrogance. It interferes with a person's main task in life—becoming a better person.

Real wisdom is not the knowledge of everything, but the knowledge of which things in life are necessary, which are less necessary, and which are completely unnecessary to know.

Men pray to the Almighty to relieve poverty. But poverty comes not from God's laws-it is blasphemy of the worst kind to say that. Poverty comes from man's injustice to his fellow man.

Like seasonless fowl we migrate…from East Coast to West Coastand back and forth again, for a job, for a friend, for a change, for a kick.

But when I think of us, in the quiet when I'm on my own, I think of Beauty and the Beast.I, being the beast, and you being the last beautiful thing in this city.

A great truth wants to be criticized not idolized

As a writer, all you want to do is write for great actors. That's all.

It's the face itself that I love, not that face at twenty-eight or thirty-four or forty-three. It's that face.

A world of made is not a world of born

It is harder to cut our gains than to cut our losses.

I like the fact that in ancient Chinese art the great painters always included a deliberate flaw in their work: human creation is never perfect.

When you write things down, they sometimes take you places you hadn't planned.

Robert Plant asked me to marry him, but I said 'no.' I mean, you just don't want to marry someone you've wanted to do it with since you were thirteen, because, well, if he farts, I would, like, die!