People genuinely happy in their choices seem less often tempted to force them on other people than those who feel martyred and broken by their lives.

Every artist seems to me to have the job of bearing witness to the world we live in. To some extent I think of all of us as artists, because we have voices and we are each of us unique.

The message of women's liberation is that women can love each other and ourselves against our degrading education.

I didn't want to be a boy, ever, but I was outraged that his height and intelligence were graces for him and gaucheries for me.

Morality is a test of our conformity rather than our integrity.

To live in a harmonious balance of commitments and pleasures is what I strive for.

My private measure of success is daily. If this were to be the last day of my life would I be content with it? To live in a harmonious balance of commitments and pleasures is what I strive for.

I've never been resigned to ready-made ideas as I was to ready-made clothes, perhaps because although I couldn't sew, I could think.

If we don't bear witness as citizens, as people, as individuals, the right that we have had to life is sacrificed. There is a silence, instead of a speaking presence.

Morality, like language, is an invented structure for conserving and communicating order. And morality is learned, like language, by mimicking and remembering.

I had always said to myself that forty was the cut off point of my apprenticeship which may for some people sound like a very long one, but the novel as art is a middle-aged art.

Have a scaffold erected in the square. We shall hang a traitor or two before dinner. And perhaps afterwards as well.” - Princess Karena

Invest in your dreams, not in your fears.

Treasure the beauty of youthful life and the wisdom of adulthood.

Every time a child's promise is cut short by their legal status, our country wastes precious resources and loses talent we need.

Democracies should be a delirium of choices - more options, not fewer; more avenues to travel, not fewer.

Give us a religion that will help us to live - we can die without assistance.

My shoulder's not where I want it to be, but I'm doing a good job of monitoring it.

Whoever speaks of Europe is wrong: it is a geographical expression.

Critics like to build you up, tear you down, and then, if you're lucky, build you up again.

Go and preach to all, 'Arise, awake, sleep no more: within each of you there is the power to remove all wants and all miseries. Believe this, and that power will be manifested.