To remain pure, a novel has to cast a moral puzzle. Anything else is mere negotiation.

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.

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

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.

When time furtively slips like sand through the fingers and our memory becomes tired and lazy, we recognize we are at war. We are at war with forgetfulness. ("The past was her best friend" )

I think that the only way that you really keep it a secret is by not telling anyone.

Learn what is to be taken seriously and laugh at the rest.

Modern education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks only entertainment in its wonder-tales and gladly dispenses with all disagreeable incident.

Christians don't tell lies, they just go to church and sing them. How many times have you stood and sang, “Take my life and let it be” when you haven't given Him one ounce?

We are dreamers. We worship love, we hope against hope and toss practicality out the window.

When I got to Grinnell College, I was part of the black turtleneck sweater and Camel cigarette crowd of poets and writers.

Consult not your fears but your hopes and dreams. Think not about what you have tried and failed, But what is still possible for you to do. To live is to change.

Christianity, democracy, science, education, wealth, and the cumulative inheritance of a thousand years, have not preserved us from the vain repetition of history.

I had to say no to 'Fantasy Island' back when I was doing 'Bosom Buddies.'