No one can be free who has a thousand ancestors.

There isn't any such thing as an ordinary life. (92)

Nobody with any real sense of humor *can* write a love story. . . . Shakespeare is the exception that proves the rule. (90-91)

My pen shall heal, not hurt.

Don't try to write anything you can't feel - it will be a failure - 'echoes nothing worth

Fear is a vile thing, and is at the bottom of almost every wrong and hatred of the world.

Satirize wickedness if you must--but pity weakness.

I have made up my mind that I will never marry. I shall be wedded to my art.

Lovely thoughts came flying to meet me like birds. They weren't my thoughts. I couldn't think anything half so exquisite. They came from somewhere.

[Ilse] was suffering so keenly that she wanted to arraign the universe at the bar of her pain.

He was so lonely that he laughed at himself.

Don't ask for guarantees. And don't look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were heading for shore.

The problem after a war is with the victor. He thinks he has just proved that war and violence pay. Who will now teach him a lesson?

I listen to classical music at home probably more than pop music.

The heart of man ever finds a constant succession of passions, so that the destroying and pulling down of one proves generally tobe nothing else but the production and the setting up of another.

Oh, law and order! I often think it is that that is at the bottom of all the misery in the world.

I like to do comedy, but I'll be perfectly honest, I prefer to do drama and more character-driven-based stuff, generally.

Things are so scary and intimidating with AIDS and the right wing that people are looking for somebody to just give them safe harbors.

It's not about perfection; it's about the joy of striving.

As usual, no one's ever around when you need them.

Into the Music was about the first album where I felt, 'I'm starting here'...the Wavelength thing, I didn't really feel that was me.