Love, desire, ambition, faith - without them, life's so simple, believe me.

The mind is a strange and wonderful thing. I'm not sure it'll ever be able to figure itself out. Everything else maybe, from the atom to the universe, everything except itself.

I want to love and be loved.... I don't want a world without love or grief or beauty. I'd rather die.

You know, a dame with a rod is like a guy with a knitting needle.

All women are wonders because they reduce all men to the obvious.

Seems like everything people oughta know they just don't want to hear. I guess that's the big trouble with the world.

An idea can change your fate in a wonderful way but you must first let the idea to touch your mind and your heart! No closed book can ever be your hero!

It's better to get smart than to get mad. I try not to get so insulted that I will not take advantage of an opportunity to persuade people to change their minds.

For children in their most impressionable years, there is, in fantasy, the highest of stimulating and educational powers.

One mark of a deteriorating society is when people cannot discern between truth and lies. Another is that they don't care and will believe whatever their itching ears want to hear.

In spirituals, the talk of heaven and deliverance was code for a better life. 'Crossing the River Jordan' was code, of course, for escaping to freedom.

Ought not every woman, like every man, to follow the bent of her own talents?

instant intimacy was too often followed by disillusion.

Whenever I begin reading a new book, I am embarking on a new, uncharted journey with an unmarked destination. I never know where a particular book will take me, toward what other books I will be led.

You know, when I'm playing, I think of myself in front of the Wailing Wall with a saxophone in my hands, and I'm davening, I'm really telling it to the Wall.

I often find that getting head issues out of the way first makes the heart stuff easier to work on later.