Pessimists fear becoming the dupes of Hope. Optimists enjoy Hope's company, and consider being duped no great matter.

Pain narrows consciousness; pleasure blurs it.

When Medusa looks in the mirror, she sees the Lady of Sorrows.

My passions have never jumped out of the fireplace and set fire to the carpet.

Retirement requires the invention of a new hedonism, not a return to the hedonism of youth

The sewing machine joins what the scissors have cut asunder, plus whatever else comes in its path.

Clothes make a statement. Costumes tell a story.

The laughter of the aphorism is sometimes triumphant, but seldom carefree.

'Be faithful to your roots' is the liberal version of 'Stay in your ghetto.'

Every day begins with an act of courage and hope: getting out of bed.

Totem poles and wooden masks no longer suggest tribal villages but fashionable drawing rooms in New York and Paris.

A life isn't measured in hours and minutes. It's the quality, not the length.

If you want to know the value of a minute ask the person who came to the train station or airport a minute late.

I've had no problem harnessing anger.

I had to choose: Either leave the country, where it's become dangerous for me, or go on the offensive.

Emotion is the atmosphere in which thought is steeped, that which lends to thought its tone or temperature, that to which thought is often indebted for half its power.

Pleasure is none, if not diversified.

It's hard to play well, but it's easy to work hard.

Forgiveness is 'selective remembering'--a conscious decision to focus on love and let the rest go.

The problem is that what Donald Trump said, if you take it literally now, is cause for anxiety and nervousness.

Legends are best left as legends and attempts to make them real are rarely successful