Though nature be ever so generous, yet can she not make a hero alone. Fortune must contribute her part too; and till both concur, the work cannot be perfected.

Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.

All women are flirts, but some are restrained by shyness, and others by sense.

Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.

A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and this state is constant.

When we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere.

There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand imitations.

Nothing hinders a thing from being natural so much as the straining ourselves to make it seem so.

Marriage is the only war in which you sleep with the enemy.

Most people know no other way of judging men's worth but by the vogue they are in, or the fortunes they have met with.

There are no accidents so unlucky from which clever people are not able to reap some advantage, and none so lucky that the foolish are not able to turn them to their own disadvantage.

You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you.

Those who attempt to search into the majesty of God will be overwhelmed with His Glory!

Fame and fortune are calling. Are we taking the call or blocking the number?

I think love is the most unbelievable, and critical, thing in civilization. Everything else is very mechanical and predictable, but love, you can't catch it.

The tenure of a literary reputation is the most uncertain and fluctuating of all.

Choosing... it has always hurt. And always will. I know.

I don't have change I'd have to give you nine more books

I love artists. I love watching other people work.

In general, short stories are less read than before, they're less published than before and, not surprisingly, they're less taught than before.

You may not, cannot, appropriate beauty. It is the wealth of the eye, and a cat may gaze upon a king.