I know my father and my mother, but beyond that I cannot go. My ancestry is blurred.

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.

Fun I love, but too much fun is of all things the most loathsome. Mirth is better than fun, and happiness is better than mirth.

Much that we read of Russia is imagination and desire only.

Everybody has heard that family dinner is great for kids. But unfortunately, it doesn't work in many of our lives.

The movies I usually do are maybe three or four weeks because they don't have a lot of money.

Anyone who minimizes the importance of success to your future has given up on his or her own chances of accomplishment and is spending his or her life trying to convince others to do the same.

And would'st thou evil for his good repay?

You burros have calculus in your blood.

If I were mayor, I'd invite everyone to have free boat trips on the river and free balloon rides over the city. I'd let the elderly in residential homes wander free.

And is not the lute that soothes your spirit the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

The library is an arena of possibility, opening both a window into the soul and a door onto the world.