Men throw themselves on foreign assistances to spare their own, which, after all, are the only certain and sufficient ones.

The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them... Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.

Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.

A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.

My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.

There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.

A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.

Experience has taught me this, that we undo ourselves by impatience. Misfortunes have their life and their limits, their sickness and their health.

Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.

The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.

When you love yourself, feel the joy of your soul and see the dance of your spirit, you are really living your life.

Truth doesn’t need to be defended. Truth just is.

I cannot give you the formula for success but I can give you the formula for failure which is-try to please everybody.

Fairness is not an attitude. It's a professional skill that must be developed and exercised.

I like to go for a walk or swimming or in the garden when I can. It's a busy kind of life, but I guess I'm lucky.

I do tend to have characters that I guess are in some way loners or dealing with obstacles that they have to confront that ultimately make them a better person in a way.

There was a curse. There was a girl. And in the end, there was a grave. I never even saw it coming.

When you've got good writing, you can kind of give up all the research, in a way, and start just following the emotional integrity of the journey of your character.

When one starts from a portrait and seeks by successive eliminations to find pure form... one inevitably ends up with an egg.

It is all right to hold a conversation but you should let go of it now and then.