Warning: fortune cookies don't care what happens to you.

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 you go to war with your mind, you will always be at war.

From my parent's generation the idea was not that marriage was about some kind of idealized, romantic love. It was a partnership. It's about creating family. It's about creating offspring.

You think that the only thing that counts is the bottom line! What a presumptuous thing to say. The bottom line is in heaven.

The great fact is, that life is a service. The only question is, "Whom will we serve?

Death is promised. So what do you do with your life? How do you make the most of it? How do you make your voice the loudest?

I longed to read everything I possibly could, and the things I read in turn produced new yearnings.

For me a paragraph in a novel is a bit like a line in a poem. It has its own shape, its own music, its own integrity.

Excess is not really something I consider a bad thing; especially when you are talking about living.

When you have an intense game, you're going to have arguments. I have no problem with it. I think it's healthy.

Truth stood on one side and Ease on the other; it has often been so.