Matter-of-fact descriptions make the improbable seem real.

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 still a Chicagoan in the fact that I can't do Christmas with sand and palm trees. It just doesn't compute - it's not Christmas unless your face hurts when you step outside.

One hair of a woman can draw more than a hundred pair of oxen.

Resting for me is fitness training.

I care only to know, if possible, the lasting meaning that lies in all religious doctrine from the beginning till now.

The only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people.

My pessimism extends to the point of even suspecting the sincerity of other pessimists.

I want to have a little toy version of Morgana. I can then show it to my grandchildren one day. So I can say I used to have a waist.

The heart does not lie.

I think the public doesn't understand that one of the reasons I haven't stood up for myself is because in order to do that, I have to stoop to a level that further humiliates other people.

You know what make me laugh? Good, clean, honest humor. Not-trying-to-be-funny humor.