The nature of language may determine what most people say, but I always speak my own meaning.

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.

If we had directions, it wouldn't be life. It would be an assignment. Grunt work.

Keep your heart infinitesimally small and sorrow will never spy it, never plunge, never flap away with your heart in her claws.

Whether we are rich or poor, educated or uneducated, whatever our nationality, colour, social status or ideology may be, the purpose of our lives is to be happy

The Republican Party is not treating me right, and they're not treating the people that I represent right.

Envy and jealousy are the private parts of the human soul. Perhaps the comparison can be extended.

What you give to help others, builds them up enough that they are able to give to others. It's a cycle that can continue on long after you're dead and gone.

Art is the most benign cultural practice, and yet art has an upper bound of personal revelation that is so far away it is basically a horizon.

I was a girl in a land where rifles are fired in celebration of a son, while daughters are hidden away behind a curtain, their role in life simply to prepare food and give birth to children.

When the Queen says 'well done,' it means so much.

If you want, I can carry you—” “I’m fine,” she said shortly. “Let’s go.” He’d said that wrong. He should have said, “I want to carry you.