the tea-hour is the hour of peace ... strife is lost in the hissing of the kettle - a tranquilizing sound, second only to the purring of a cat.

It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.

It has been wisely said that we cannot really love anybody at whom we never laugh.

What monstrous absurdities and paradoxes have resisted whole batteries of serious arguments, and then crumbled swiftly into dust before the ringing death-knell of a laugh!

It takes time and trouble to persuade ourselves that the things we want to do are the things we ought to do.

Our dogs will love and admire the meanest of us, and feed our colossal vanity with their uncritical homage.

For indeed all that we think so new to-day has been acted over and over again, a shifting comedy, by the women of every century.

No man pursues what he has at hand. No man recognizes the need of pursuit until that which he desires has escaped him.

There are few things more wearisome in a fairly fatiguing life than the monotonous repetition of a phrase which catches and holds the public fancy by virtue of its total lack of significance.

It is not what we learn in conversation that enriches us. It is the elation that comes of swift contact with tingling currents of thought.

For my part, the good novel of character is the novel I can always pick up; but the good novel of incident is the novel I can never lay down.

We are nothing but bricks from our cultural molds

Beauty is in the character of a person. It's about having an interesting face and about what's inside. Anyone can take a good picture.

I'm going through an evolution. I'm completely cleaning out my closet. I'm purging, because I saw that show 'Hoarders.' I had a sweatshirt from sixth grade, and I'm going, 'Why do I hold on to this?'

I think there comes a point in probably most father-son relationships where the son kind of starts becoming the parent.

Knowledge and wisdom must go hand in hand. The adept will therefore endeavour to get on in knowledge as well as in wisdom, for neither of the two must lag behind in development.

Reality's just the accumulation of ominous prophecies come to life. All you have to do is open a newspaper on any given day to weigh the good news versus the bad news, and you'll see what I mean.

Not every story has a happy ending, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth telling.

In Jamaica, you're never very far away from people who don't have very much, and in Wilmette, pretty much everybody had a lot.

I have never cared too much what people say. What I am interested in is what they do.

Love stories are probably all Ive ever been able to write or want to write.