The lion cares less about being king of the beasts than about finding his dinner.

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.

Lord, forgive us for the times we have read about Gethsemane with dry eyes.

Beware of those who clam to have all the answers.

I adore imaginary monsters, but I am terrified of real ones.

I love my family.

I see people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they'll 'say something about it' or not. I hate if they do, and if they don't.

You'd only write what you know and what you know is what you do and the people you know. So you'd write about them or the people you have met casually. It's part of your life.

There is a great line of women stretching out behind you into the past, and you have to seek them out and find them in yourself and be conscious of them.

The biggest threat to this country isn't the Russians. It's our own inability to make democracy or capitalism work.

I am the very model of a modern major general

Civilisation is never so charming as when it is an island in the middle of simplicity, or of a civilisation of an alien kind.