When we begin to take our failures non-seriously it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves.

If only one could tell true love from false love as one can tell mushrooms from toadstools.

Could we change our attitude, we should not only see life differently, but life itself would come to be different.

Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy, you can't build on it it's only good for wallowing in.

How hard it is to escape from places. However carefully one goes they hold you — you leave little bits of yourself fluttering on the fences — like rags and shreds of your very life.

Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.

I always felt that the great high privilege, relief and comfort of friendship was that one had to explain nothing.

The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.

Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back.

I am poor - obscure - just eighteen years of age - with a rapacious appetite for everything and principles as light as my purse.

The mind I love must have wild places.

Even in Sri Lanka, the worst only happened in my imagination, I'd say, and this is so because we live on a planet where good people outnumber bad.

If people knew you, they would love you." He sounds matter-of-fact.Josh, you break my heart. And you're a liar.Because you know me, you know me better than almost anybody, and you don't love me.

I don't see why people want new plays all the time. What would happen to concerts if people wanted new music all the time?

Rebecca Goldstein is a rare find among contemporary novelists: she has intellectual muscle as well as a tender emotional reach.

How embarrassing to be human.

Our legislative victory - an end to earmarks.

We have to try to cure our faults by attention and not by will.

I used to fancy Jonathan Rhys Meyers. I didnt tell him that when we worked together on Another Me.

When the audience comes in, it changes the temperature of what you've written.

Kids instinctively know - although they will argue to the contrary - that they really are not mature enough to make good decisions on some important issues.