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

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

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.

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

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.

Put in the time, learn something new, challenge your perception and know that a setback is an opportunity in hindsight

I was 20 years old at Pearl Harbor. I was in the Navy about a year and four months before the war.

You can be gorgeous at thirty, charming at forty, and irresistible for the rest of your life.

Life is too short to waste time harboring bad feelings about anyone. Forgive, forget, then move on!

Hypnosis. You know, I'm not a big fan of that bark like a chicken, cluck like a dog stuff.

I grew up on the West Side - the "near West Side," [in Detroit], as they say - in what would be considered now the inner city.

Our happiness depends on the habit of mind we cultivate.

As he did so, a wind rose up around him, around the man who had been called lord, Dragon Reborn, king, killer, lover and friend.

Greatness consists not in the holding of some future office, but really consists in doing great deeds with little means and the accomplishment of vast purposes from the private ranks of life.

Only a good-for-nothing is not interested in his past.