Much of life becomes background, but it is the province of art to throw buckets of light into the shadows and make life new again.

Look in the mirror. The face that pins you with its double gaze reveals a chastening secret.

Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains...

I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.

It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.

I swear I will not dishonor my soul with hatred, but offer myself humbly as a guardian of nature, as a healer of misery, as a messenger of wonder, as an architect of peace.

Wonder is the heaviest element on the periodic table. Even a tiny fleck of it stops time.

No matter how politely one says it, we owe our existence to the farts of blue-green algae.

Words are such small things, like confetti in the brain, and yet they are color and clarify everything, they can stain the mind or warp the feelings.

The heart is a museum, filled with the exhibits of a lifetime's loves.

We live on the leash of our senses. There is no way in which to understand the world without first detecting it through the radar-net of our senses.

Be still and know that I am God

It was a miserable thing, to be responsible for breaking your own heart.

Having an eye patch actually makes it easier to look through a camera - I don't have to close one eye like everyone else.

The party at its best has always been a modern party.

We inspire friendship in men when we have contracted friendship with the gods.

In the beginning was the myth.

In the UK, everything is a bit older and a bit more worn-out, and the people are a bit more tired. You know. I think Americans are a bit looser, a bit more out to have a fun time.

I get twitchy if I don't pick up a guitar or sit at the piano every now and then... I have to do it; I don't have a choice.

The one thing I always loved about Michael Jackson: he had fun records, but he's also going to make some important statement with the music as well. He's not going to forsake the culture.

We have a policy at The New Yorker, .. That is, if someone doesn't want to be profiled, we drop it. I would like you to show me the same courtesy.