We're out of cocktail olives, it's a tragedy of historic proportions, but we're coping because we're Americans.

The functions of intellect are insufficient without courage, love, friendship, compassion and empathy.

The whisper of the dusk is night shedding its husk.

Where there is cake, there is hope. And there is always cake.

Petting, scratching, and cuddling a dog could be as soothing to the mind and heart as deep meditation and almost as good for the soul as prayer.

Nothing is worse than being alone on the evening of the day when one's cow has exploded.

Only once in a generation does anything as fresh as a vomiting detective come along.

The hands of every clock are shears, trimming us away scrap by scrap, and every time piece with a digital readout blinks us towards implosion.

Most people tend to think the best of those who are blessed with beauty; we have difficulty imagining that physical perfection can conceal twisted emotions or a damaged mind.

Any drunk who has tried to put his car where a lamppost stands is a self-educated physicist.

Given my heritage and the ordeal of my childhood, I sometimes wonder why I myself am not insane. Maybe I am.

Study for Knowledge, not for marks. If you have the Knowledge, you will get the marks.

Sometimes, before you make any plans or resolutions, before you declare your heroic intent to persevere, you just have to cry.

What worries you masters you.

In October, a maple tree before your window lights up your room like a great lamp. Even on cloudy days, its presence helps to dispel the gloom.

I'm not scared of snakes, spiders or heights. I have three children; as a mum, you can't be afraid of things like that.

Daytime sleep is a cursed slumber from which one wakes in despair.

There are so many selves in everybody, and just to explore and exploit one is wrong, dead wrong, for the creative person.

A [New Yorker ] is what it has always been. It combines those who pursue the truth with those who pursue the rewards of orthodoxy and those who pursue what is comfortable to the rich.

Electricity, water, gas, and steam course through the walls of my building, keeping it alive.

Who looks upon a river in a meditative hour and is not reminded of the flux of all things?