What depresses me is the inevitable way the second rate forges ahead and the deserving is left behind.

All change is not growth as all movement is not forward.

All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward.

A tragic irony of life is that we so often achieve success or financial independence after the chief reason for which we sought it has passed away.

What happens is not as important as how you react to what happens.

It is lovely, when I forget all birthdays, including my own, to find that somebody remembers me.

It is human nature to overestimate the thing you've never had.

The worst thing about war is that so many people enjoy it.

The older I grow the more earnestly I feel that the few joys of childhood are the best that life has to give.

I have little faith in the theory that organized killing is the best prelude to peace.

The only difference between a rut and a grave are the dimensions.

Balance only happens in dynamic tension. Balance is giving not equal but appropriate attention to each of the various categories of your life.

I know people can be a little nervous about swimsuits, but have some fun with it. Believe you can hold it down. If you believe you can hold it down, you can wear it.

You really have to challenge yourself to come out of those parameters that they put you in, even if that's your job.

You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler.

Things said and done innocently should never be used as weapons.

The only thing on my mind right now is trying to win the whole thing.

Fasting is a medicine.

Even when I rehearse down in the bowels of the Metropolitan Opera, you can't help but think why The Phantom of the Opera was inspired by what happens in the bowels of the opera house.

The logic of freedom of religion implies freedom to be an atheist, even though, from a historical perspective, this has not been accepted in the Muslim world.

Subjectivity is an ability, the capacity to use a new inner mode of presenting the fact that you currently know something to yourself.