Many gloat over their own troubles.

Pain narrows consciousness; pleasure blurs it.

When Medusa looks in the mirror, she sees the Lady of Sorrows.

My passions have never jumped out of the fireplace and set fire to the carpet.

Retirement requires the invention of a new hedonism, not a return to the hedonism of youth

The sewing machine joins what the scissors have cut asunder, plus whatever else comes in its path.

Clothes make a statement. Costumes tell a story.

The laughter of the aphorism is sometimes triumphant, but seldom carefree.

'Be faithful to your roots' is the liberal version of 'Stay in your ghetto.'

Every day begins with an act of courage and hope: getting out of bed.

Totem poles and wooden masks no longer suggest tribal villages but fashionable drawing rooms in New York and Paris.

I'm a poet, and I like my lies the way my mother used to make them.

A little conflict can create a lot of creativity.

But as the arms-control scholar Thomas Schelling once noted, two things are very expensive in international life: promises when they succeed and threats when they fail.

Gentleness succeeds better than violence.

It is sure to be dark if you shut your eyes.

I just want to be known as a very normal person and be treated as that and be able to walk down the street like anyone else.

Maybe I'm secretly in my soul a method actor.

Learning to trust our intuition is an art form, and like all other art forms, it takes practice to perfect.

There is always something else to do. A gardener should have nine times as many lives as a cat.

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.