One must be careful with words. Words turn probabilities into facts and by sheer force of definition translate tendencies into habits.

If you do nothing unexpected, nothing unexpected happens.

Nothing happens, and nothing happens, and then everything happens.

There's no such thing as old age, there is only sorrow.

Only one thing registers on the subconscious mind: repetitive application - practice. What you practice is what you manifest.

I didn't even know I was a feminist until I read it on the back of one of my own books.

The desire for self-expression afflicts people when they feel there is something of themselves which is not getting through to the outside world.

Fiction stretches our sensibilities and our understanding, as mere information never can.

Marriage is a very difficult relationship for nearly everyone and I'm sure you shouldn't do it if you want a quiet little easy life.

guilt to motherhood is like grapes to wine

She could see that to lose a sibling was hard: it could only seem unnatural:out of time, out of order, a vicious re-run of your own departure into nothingness.

What strange places our lives can carry us to, what dark passages.

Democratic principles are the result of equality of condition.

When everything flows into place ? washes dry tonally correct, crisp and sparkling, the light scheme is sound and the "accidentals" are all happy ones ? I'm temporarily in a euphoric state.

You're gonna get what's good, you're gonna get what the generals and what the admirals and what - and the enlisted and they'll - we'll get together, we wanna get the right stuff.

The whole visible world is perhaps nothing other than a motivation of man's wish to rest for a moment an attempt to falsify the fact of knowledge, to try to turn the knowledge into the goal.

I read so ravenously that I would read through whole categories. I was crazy about reading biographies. [...] I think biographies are very urgent to children.

Singing really oxygenates your blood. You stretch your lungs and take in much more air into them than before. It's really good for your health.

Human weakness is to desire to know what one does not want to know.

Fame made me develop a panic disorder.

The idol of today pushes the hero of yesterday out of our recollection; and will, in turn, be supplanted by his successor of tomorrow.