Memory is identity....You are what you have done; what you have done is in your memory; what you remember defines who you are; when you forget your life you cease to be, even before your death.

A pier is a disappointed bridge; yet stare at it for long enough and you can dream it to the other side of the Channel.

Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books.

The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.

The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly.

The land of embarrassment and breakfast.

When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it.

History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.

What is the easiest, the most comfortable thing for a writer to do? To congratulate the society in which he lives: to admire its biceps, applaud its progress, tease it endearingly about its follies.

Some of the freckles I once loved are now closer to liver spots. But it’s still the eyes we look at, isn’t it? That’s where we found the other person, and find them still.

The more you learn, the less you fear. "Learn" not in the sense of academic study, but in the practical understanding of life.

Genius is rarely able to give any account of its own processes.

I'm big about washing my face before I go to bed, washing it when I wake up in the morning, getting good sleep and drinking a lot of water. Those are just easy things that you can do for your skin.

More things in politics happen by accident or exhaustion than happen by conspiracy.

Who said we were owed happiness?

'In Utero' was the first time I'd made an album that reached into the dark side. I remember the conflict and the uncertainty. I remember all those things when I hear 'Pennyroyal Tea.'

We put the wrong emphasis on what beauty is and what health is. Health is being vibrant and having energy and being happy.

I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary Cooper.

Love in the past is only a memory. Love in the future is only a fantasy. True love lives in the here and now.

When you read God's Word, you must constantly be saying to yourself, "It is talking to me, and about me".

Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to learn unpleasant things from his enemies; they are ready enough to tell them.