It took me years to learn to sit at my desk for more than two minutes at a time, to put up with the solitude and the terror of failure, and the godawful silence and the white paper.

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.

Pain and suffering are inevitable in our lives, but misery is an option

How to run an ultramarathon ? Puff out your chest, put one foot in front of the other, and don't stop till you cross the finish line.

"The harder you work, the luckier you get" is true in all things.

Hello and good-bye are not as simple as everyone thinks.

I get little kids who recognize me from 'Mary Poppins,' and it just delights me because it's our third generation.

Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote.

Men are taught to apologise for their weaknesses, women for their strengths.

Let not the 12 million Negroes be ashamed of the fact that they are the grandchildren of slaves. There is dishonor in being slave-owners.

I think wine is such a big universe that it's kind of like food - it's intimidating to a lot of people, myself included.

That's too coincidental to be a coincidence.