Not having to own a car has made me realize what a waste of time the automobile is.

A chaplain's biggest gift is to be present and just listen.

Statuettes of drunken sailors, velvet pictures of island maidens, plastic seashell lamps made in Taiwan. What contempt the people who think up souvenirs have for other people.

Women have the feeling that since they didn't make the rules, the rules have nothing to do with them.

Laughter is the jam on the toast of life. It adds flavor, keeps it from being too dry, and makes it easier to swallow.

...is this not in fact the purpose of young Americans going abroad? To make them think of things they never thought of?

The whole process of writing a novel is having this great, beautiful idea and then spoiling it.

In what we think of as bad dialogue, the characters talk directly to each other.

Glenda Adams has written a wicked and witty novel.

But novels are never about what they are about; that is, there is always deeper, or more general, significance. The author may not be aware of this till she is pretty far along with it.

Any essayist setting out on a frail apparatus of notings and jottings is a brave person.

Usually it is through loss that the true value of anything is fully understood.

The soles of his shoes are worn the way the edges of erasers become rounded with use. As though he walks around correcting his mistakes.

Oh, bein' young ain't easy 'cos ev'rythin' you're puzzlin'n'anxin' you're puzzlin'n'anxin' it for the first time.

I don't have a lot of self-confidence. I'm getting there. Before I had zero confidence, but it's one of those things you learn and accept.

I have always believed that good is only beauty put into practice.

Maybe, love is always forgiveness, to a degree.

People have every right to be offended -- but that doesn't mean they get to take away your right to offend.

I talk about being Australian a lot.

Madness is a prerequisite of being in showbusiness.

Twelve people die every day because there aren't enough kidneys.