The more one knows fairy tales the less fantastical they appear; they can be vehicles of the grimmest realism, expressing hope against all the odds with gritted teeth.

Fairy tales are about money, marriage, and men. They are the maps and manuals that are passed down from mothers and grandmothers to help them survive.

The female form provides the solution in which the essence itself is held; she is passio, and acted upon, the male is actio, the mover.

Meanings of all kinds flow through the figures of women, and they often do not include who she herself is.

If you want to learn about a culture, you look at what buildings the people lived in but you also want to know about their cosmos.

The vocabulary of pleasure depends on the imagery of pain.

The sombre-suited masculine world of the Protestant religion is altogether too much like a gentlemen's club to which the ladies are only admitted on special days.

Wonder has no opposite; it springs up already doubled in itself, compounded of dread and desire at once, attraction and recoil, producing a thrill, the shudder of pleasure and of fear.

When I was young, I did actually model and was much photographed by famous photographers. But I was always a bookworm.

I was brought up a Catholic and I was quite fervent, because I was sent to a convent school.

I avoid looking in the mirror.

Write bylaws in a simple language—no one needs an advanced degree to understand them.

So, in the physical world mankind are prone to seek an explanation of uncommon phenomena only, while the ordinary changes of nature, which are in themselves equally wonderful, are disregarded.

I never promise anything. I don't promise anything to my mum. I don't promise anything to the supporters.

Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man.

You can't get a job without experience and you can't get experience until you have a job. Once you solve that problem you are home free.

I cannot say and no man could say that no more will be asked of us.

The simplest and most familiar truth seems new and wonderful the instant we ourselves experience it for the first time.

The first time I walked into a library, I got so excited I almost wet my pants.

A man cannot sleep in his cradle: whatever is useful must in the nature of life become useless.

Influence is to be measured, not by the extent of surface it covers, but by its kind.