What I really hated, of course, was my mind. There must have been an off switch somewhere, but I was damned if I could find it.

The Greeks had invented democracy, built the Acropolis and called it a day.

Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you're offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone's feelings.

A zoo is a good place to make a spectacle of yourself, as the people around you have creepier, more photogenic things to look at.

There seemed to be some correlation between devotion to God and a misguided zeal for marshmallows.

All of us take pride and pleasure in the fact that we are unique, but I'm afraid that when all is said and done the police are right: it all comes down to fingerprints.

Remember that the most important thing is to try and love other people as much as they love you.

Everyone looks retarded once you set your mind to it.

I started writing when I was twenty, and my first book came out seventeen years later.

Like all of my friends, she's a lousy judge of character.

A good [short story] would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit.

Forcing girls to be ashamed for doing the things that come natural to them — it's a ridiculous double standard, and we should all, frankly, tell anyone who judges us to screw off.

Real beauty is to be true to oneself. That's what makes me feel good.

Wisdom alone is true ambition's aim, wisdom is the source of virtue and of fame; obtained with labour, for mankind employed, and then, when most you share it, best enjoyed.

Never let money get in the way of an idea

Art is something given, not reproduced... the painter paints what he sees with his innermost senses, the expression of his being... for him every other impression becomes an inner expression.

The business changes every day, and you should be willing to change with it. You have to be willing to change with it.

There is nothing about an individual as important as his IQ, except possibly his morals.

So long as untouchability disfigures Hinduism, so long do I hold the attainment of Swaraj to be an utter impossibility.

Something that works for one person could be a disadvantage to another.

If she just wanted to come home at night to eye candy with good hair, I could probably be that reasonably well.