To win a woman in the first place you must please her, then undress her, and then somehow get her clothes back on her, finally, so that she will let you leave her, you've got to antagonise her.

Only the mediocre are always at their best.

Sadness flies on the wings of the morning, and out of the heart of darkness comes the light.

When you see a woman who can go nowhere without a staff of admirers, it is not so much because they think she is beautiful, it is because she has told them they are handsome.

Little by little, the pimps have taken over the world. They don't do anything, they don't make anything - they just stand there and take their cut.

I'm not afraid of death. It's the stake one puts up in order to play the game of life.

There is no better way of exercising the imagination than the study of law. No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets the truth.

The flower is the poetry of reproduction. It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life.

One of the privileges of the great is to witness catastrophes from a terrace.

To seek out in a world full of joy the one thing that is certain to give you pain, and hug it to your bosom with all your strength; that's the greatest human happiness.

A man's name, title, and rank are artificial and impermanent; they do nothing to reveal what he really is, even to himself.

I was not content to believe in a personal devil and serve him, in the ordinary sense of the word. I wanted to get hold of him personally and become his chief of staff.

There are some exceptions: Chicago, my hometown, in particular. But overall in the country this is a much safer place than it used to be.

I like the rule that corrects emotion.

The new kind of dancing meant liberation not only from the rules of leading and following but from rules of any kind.

When I was young, before school, my father would wake me up and we would go running together. A love of being physical, being active and being outside was something he instilled in me.

The men in my life were wonderful, but they were very artistic and very creative and they were adventurers like myself. So it wasn't right to settle down with them.

Imprisoned in a cage of sound, even the trivial seems profound

The secret was a hole in the middle of me that every happy thing fell into.

I am starting a collection of only right-hand gloves. It’s ever so bourgeois to have two.

I gave her my deluxe I'll-Kill-You-Later stare.