I think poetry is the best thing I do. It's certainly the purest. I seem to switch gears without too much trouble. Non-fiction is in many ways the easiest to write.

You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.

And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.

I have accepted fear as a part of life - specifically the fear of change... I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back.

The stones themselves are thick with history, and those cats that dash through the alleyways must surely be the ghosts of the famous dead in feline disguise.

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.

Ambivalence is a wonderful tune to dance to. It has a rhythm all its own.

Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.

How wonderful to have someone to blame! How wonderful to live with one's nemesis! You may be miserable, but you feel forever in the right.

My generation was not only maligned in book reviews and attacked in graduate school but we lived to see our adored and adorable daughters wonder why feminism had become a dirty word.

It kind of struck me how great it would be to go out with a guy that size. And if you, you know, got tired of dating him, you could always use him as a house or something.

I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.

If the problem can be solved why worry? If the problem cannot be solved worrying will do you no good.

What will be the good of the conquest of leisure and health, if no one remembers how to use them?

It was good to walk into a library again; it smelled like home.

If each of us were to confess his most secret desire, the one that inspires all his plans, all his actions, he would say: "I want to be praised."

Whether we think we can or cannot, we are right.

Socrates asks him the crucial question about education, and that is, If you study with this fellow, what will he make of you?

I think any good artist - and I'm not saying that I am one - takes notes and should first emulate their heroes and then try to move beyond them.

Love perhaps includes the promise that when the mob comes for you I'll go against the mob.