You must find the right voice (or voices) for the timbre that can convince a reader to give himself up to you.

You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.

And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.

I have accepted fear as a part of life - specifically the fear of change... I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back.

The stones themselves are thick with history, and those cats that dash through the alleyways must surely be the ghosts of the famous dead in feline disguise.

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.

Ambivalence is a wonderful tune to dance to. It has a rhythm all its own.

Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.

How wonderful to have someone to blame! How wonderful to live with one's nemesis! You may be miserable, but you feel forever in the right.

My generation was not only maligned in book reviews and attacked in graduate school but we lived to see our adored and adorable daughters wonder why feminism had become a dirty word.

Holding a grudge does not hurt the person against whom the grudge is held, it hurts the one who holds it.

I will appoint an attorney general who will reform the Department of Justice like it was necessary after Watergate.

A visual sense is something you either have or you don't.

He who helps in the saving of others, saves himself as well.

Americans have got it so dinged into them that they are the most fortunate people on Earth, and that the rest of the world - the sooner it copies what America is like, the better.

Identity is the continuity in a personality that survives through various vicissitudes, through change.

My songs, they have just the one chord, there's none of that fancy stuff you hear now, with lots of chords in one song. If I find another chord I leave it for another song.

My guru is in my imagination anywhere. Anywhere.

O Lord, grant that I may do Thy will as if it were my will, so that Thou mayest do my will as if it were Thy will.

It's kind of a shock to your skin, changing climates. It's new water, and new air quality.