We call ours a utilitarian age, and we do not know the uses of any single thing. We have forgotten that water can cleanse, that fire can purify, and that the Earth is mother to us all.

The best way to appreciate your job is to imagine yourself without one.

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

Always forgive your enemies nothing annoys them so much.

It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.

Everyone may not be good, but there's always something good in everyone. Never judge anyone shortly because every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

Be yourself; everyone else is taken.

Women are made to be loved, not understood.

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.

I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.

Every rose has poetry in her heart and is eager to tell you when you are in love.

The primary feature of women is not a 'beauty', it's a 'mystery'.

Sometimes it is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than of a pleasure.

Success is really when you create a space, a piece of art, and people come in and say, that's my story - when they claim it.

Surprise makes a joke funny. I love it when someone tells me something I couldn't possibly have expected; you've been led along one path and - bang! - the joke comes out of nowhere.

Online writing is supplementary, complementary, another part of the whole, something that's only as important as one's investment in it.

You forgot the ‘my precious,’” Anna said dryly. “If you want to act like a freaking nutcase, you have to do it right.

One truth is that suffering raises profound questions with the universe. The other truth is that grace, gift and generosity also raise profound questions.

We didn't start out to make a protest record at all. That would have been too shallow. As usual, it was simply a case of absorbing what's going on around us.

I can never get used to the fact, though I know it, that women are born cynics. Men have to learn cynicism. Infant girls could teach it to them.