Novels give you the matrix of emotions, give you the flavour of a time in a way formal history cannot.

We use our parents like recurring dreams, to be entered into when needed.

A simple grateful thought turned heavenwards is the most perfect prayer.

Whatever you're meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.

If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air.

Every child has the capacity to be everything.

Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so.

What's terrible is to pretend that second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.

Things are not quite so simple always as black and white.

You have to be grown up, really grown up, not merely in years, to understand your parents.

There is nothing more boring for an intelligent woman than to spend endless amounts of time with small children.

The value of life is best appreciated by those who have only a short time to live.

The optimistic nature finds joy in the very feeling for life

To know true love, even though it was impossible to keep, had finally cracked her heart open enough to let someone else in.

A conquered foe should be watched.

When a man is asked to make a speech, the first thing he has to decide is what to say.

A man would rather fail according to his own ideas than succeed according to another's.

If God calls you, pick up the damn phone!

I always felt that the Cubans were being pushed into the Soviet Bloc by American policy.

My mom is always with me. When I made my major-league debut I told her, 'That's it. You don't work anymore. I'm going to work and take care of you.

I'm mad, you know? I don't think of retiring at all.