I love living. I have some problems with my life, but living is the best thing they've come up with so far.

If you can go through life without experiencing pain you probably haven't been born yet.

If no one ever took risks, Michaelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor.

Talent is the gift plus the passion - a desire to succeed so intense that no force on earth can stop it.

Once you start compromising your thoughts, you're a candidate for mediocrity.

Never underestimate the stimulation of eccentricity.

It's always painful when you're writing memoirs because you've got to go through the dark places, but it gives you a chance to find out the person you really are, not the person you thought you were.

Take care of him. And make him feel important. And if you can do that, you'll have a happy and wonderful marriage. Like two out of every ten couples.

Writing is an escape from a world that crowds me. I like being alone in a room. It's almost a form of meditation- an investigation of my own life.

I was constantly being dragged out of movies for laughing too loud.

Everyone thinks they can write a play; you just write down what happened to you. But the art of it is drawing from all the moments of your life.

Once the inspiration comes, that directs where the perspiration goes.

President Obama insists hes a free-market guy. But you have to wonder whether he understands how a free economy really works.

He who, with strong passions, remains chaste--he who, keenly sensitive, with manly power of indignation in him, can yet restrain himself and forgive--these are strong men, spiritual heroes.

I'd rather play a maid than be one.

We should not allow fear or anxiety to stop us from doing something. If you think through something well and prepare thoroughly, you can do a lot of things you think you can't.

If my mother hadn't thrown my football boots on the fire, I might have become as famous as Denis Compton.

What is beyond the mind, has no boundary, In it our senses end.

Roam in the world as a lion of self-control; see that the frogs of weakness don’t kick you around.

I left Russia in 1993 optimistic that democracy had taken hold despite the obstacles.

You are authentic when everything you say and everything you do you ACTUALLY believe.