If I were going to convert to any religion I would probably choose Catholicism because it at least has female saints and the Virgin Mary.

But nothing is more opaque than absolute transparency.

I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only one 'race' - the human race - and that we are all members of it.

Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.

Canada was built on dead beavers.

A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it, but there's less of you.

We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly.

You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself.

Nature is to zoos as God is to churches.

If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia.

Another belief of mine; that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.

A person that does not value your time will not value your advice.

Our true spirit can never become diseased or distressed.

(...) I do want to leave, in the desperate way that an animal wants to escape a trap. Wild and rabid. Ready to gnaw through bone.

Human beings of any age need to approve of themselves; the bad times in history come when they cannot.

In order to succeed spectacularly you have to be willing to fail spectacularly.

I think that time moves slower in painting. And maybe that accounts for a lot of the anxiety around painting in the last 40 or 50 years.

There's no reason you should write any novel quickly.

And frankly, I don't understand - I mean, I'm obviously a card-carrying Democrat - but I can't understand why any woman would want to vote for Mitt Romney, except maybe Mrs. Romney.

No temporary chaos is worth your sanity.

I mean, some people accuse me of being racist. I'm totally not, I'm just better than everybody else.