The essence of romantic love is that wonderful beginning, after which sadness and impossibility may become the rule.

Real love is a pilgrimage. It happens when there is no strategy, but it is very rare because most people are strategists.

Good women always think it is their fault when someone else is being offensive. Bad women never take the blame for anything.

Time misspent in youth is sometimes all the freedom one ever has.

Romanticism is not just a mode; it literally eats into every life. Women will never get rid of just waiting for the right man.

Accountability in friendship is the equivalent of love without strategy.

Always let them think of you as singing and dancing.

You never know what you will learn till you start writing. Then you discover truths you never knew existed.

Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.

A man of such obvious and exemplary charm must be a liar.

I suppose what one wants really is ideal company and books are ideal company.

It's time to give the gavel back to God, we were never meant to be judges.

My mom was a source of strength. She showed me by example that women, regardless of how difficult life may get, can do it all.

I've always been a huge fan of the 'Pirates of the Caribbean' movies.

Ask the beasts and they will teach you the beauty of this earth.

Nations are possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave. What if equal pains were taken to smooth and polish their manners?

Men ought to know that from the brain, and from the brain only, arise our pleasures, joy, laughter and jests, as well as our sorrows, pains, griefs, and tears.

For while agents and editors often misunderstand their market and sometimes reject good or even great works, they do prevent a vast quantity of truly execrable writing from being published.

I always try and learn as much as I can from different departments on a film set.

One doesn't read Jane Austen; one re-reads Jane Austen.

I'm very inspired by him-it was my father who taught us that an immigrant must work twice as hard as anybody else, that he must never give up.