The Korean man nodded, the way you do when you’re a foreigner and understand that someone has finished a sentence.

The Greeks had invented democracy, built the Acropolis and called it a day.

Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you're offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone's feelings.

A zoo is a good place to make a spectacle of yourself, as the people around you have creepier, more photogenic things to look at.

There seemed to be some correlation between devotion to God and a misguided zeal for marshmallows.

All of us take pride and pleasure in the fact that we are unique, but I'm afraid that when all is said and done the police are right: it all comes down to fingerprints.

Remember that the most important thing is to try and love other people as much as they love you.

Everyone looks retarded once you set your mind to it.

I started writing when I was twenty, and my first book came out seventeen years later.

Like all of my friends, she's a lousy judge of character.

A good [short story] would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit.

Even the moon is only poetical because there is a man in the moon.

If somebody tells you there's a rule, break it.

Each new generation is a fresh invasion of savages.

My faith is a great weight hung on a small wire, as doth the spider hang her baby on a thin web.

We can't abolish prejudice through laws.

You're always looking for roles and other creatives who are going to be challenging to you, because you're always a better actor after the experience.

It's not what other people believe you can do, it's what you believe.

I understand that it is not when or how you die but how and if you truly were ever alive.

Neglect starts out as an infection then becomes a disease.

I think women need to be kinder to other women. I think once we realize that, shoulder to shoulder, walking in the same direction, we're the greatest force of nature…our destiny can change.