It is by sitting down to write every morning that he becomes a writer. Those who do not do this remain amateurs.

Middle age snuffs out more talent than even wars or sudden death.

Everyone is a bore to someone. That is unimportant. The thing to avoid is being a bore to oneself.

Those who have money think that the most important thing in the world is love. The poor know it is money.

Wisdom is keeping a sense of fallibility of all our views and opinions.

We are closer to the ants than to the butterflies. Very few people can endure much leisure.

In a happy marriage it is the wife who provides the climate, the husband the landscape.

We confess our bad qualities to others out of fear of appearing naive or ridiculous by not being aware of them.

Old age takes away from us what we have inherited and gives us what we have earned.

The only test of work of literature is that it shall please other ages than its own.

Words are as recalcitrant as circus animals, and the unskilled trainer can crack his whip at them in vain.

Success in the knowledge economy comes to those who know themselves - their strengths, their values, and how they best perform.

I have nothing to lose. I keep all my valuables in a safe.

Ideally, I would love to mix singing and acting, but you can only be a pop star for so many years. I mean, at 30 it's a little bit sad, right?

Be respectful of your Sensei.

So being two different people in one day unnerved me to no end.

My husband is someone who's in the real world. It's a big help that I don't have both feet in Hollywood

I know Vikings isnt really based in magic, but it goes back to Old World spirituality and different religions, and a lot of voodoo.

You shouldn’t blindly accept a leader’s advice. You’ve got to question leaders on occasion.

The first effect of modernism was to make high culture difficult: to surround beauty with a wall of erudition.

Excitable boy, they all said, he killed and raped her and brought her home.