To impress others we must be earnest; to amuse them, it is only necessary to be kindly and fanciful.
[Margaret Thatcher] admitted to being the daughter of her father but not the daughter of her mother!
I'm a very organised and rational and linear thinker and you have to stop all that to write a novel.
I've got so many ideas, and sometimes the more exhausted my body gets, the more active my mind gets.
He runs to the sink to spit it out. I grin. There’s nothing quite as funny as someone else’s misery.
Telling Sam and Daneca feels like peeling off my own skin to expose everything underneath. It hurts.
You can't pick up the telephone and say, 'Connect me with someone else who has a kid with leukemia.'
The public mind [is] a cloudy region where only the simplest shapes are discerned with any accuracy.
Whenever I find myself arguing for something with great passion, I can be certain I'm not convinced.
Liberals retain a totemic attachment to the Freudian idea that traumatic toilet training is destiny.
I dance. A lot. I work grief and sadness out of my body when I dance, and I bring in joy and rhythm.
The brooding is better than the joy because even if the heart fills with happiness, it still mourns.
Tis the voice of the sluggard I heard him complain,You have wak'd me too soon, I must slumber again.
You spend the first part of your life collecting things ... and the second half getting rid of them.
Conceit is a privilege of the ignorant; the wise man is humble because he knows how little he knows.
I lived among the Japanese, and saw their mode of living, in regions unaffected by European contact.
You think of the book you'd most like to be reading, and then you sit down and shamelessly write it.
I was talking aloud to myself. A habit of the old: they choose the wisest person present to speak to
Don't leave me here alone! It's your Sam calling. Don't go where I can't follow! Wake up, Mr. Frodo!
What has roots as nobody sees, Is taller than trees Up, up it goes, And yet never grows? A mountain.
You shouldn't call then anything. They're poor unfortunate people who cannot help the way they look.
Fifteen. Sixteen was probably something, but fifteen - fifteen was a place between here and nowhere.
My kids speak of both subtle slights and blatant racism. It's a narrative I never imagined for them.
The soul attracts that which it secretly harbors; that which it loves, and also that which it fears.
Man's mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild.
James Brown's music still sounds as fresh and as good and as new as it did when he first created it.
I feel like my life is just passing me by like two ships in the night. And I have missed both boats.
Never does one feel oneself so utterly helpless as in trying to speak comfort for great bereavement.
If you give up at the first rejection or the first bad review, you will never make it in publishing.
Truth is, I'm a good Catholic girl. The faith has always been elusive, but the guilt is intractable.
There's me and then there's you, and you aren't ever going to be as good as me, Sweet Thing." Ranger
And something chocolate, of course. A meal was not a meal without some sort of chocolate for desert.
When people ask what you do, tell them you're a writer. Put yourself on the line. Make a commitment.
If an ordinary person is silent, it may be a tactical manoeuvre. If a writer is silent, he is lying.
There's a high level of communication between all of us at Marvel, and between Marvel and Lucasfilm.
Poverty is the only load which is the heavier the more loved ones there are to assist in bearing it.
Nations and men are only the best when they are the gladdest, and deserve heaven when they enjoy it.
The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.
Every journey conceals another journey within its lines: the path not taken and the forgotten angle.
Although wherever you are going is always in front of you, there is no such thing as straight ahead.
Love's lengthways splits the heart in two - the heart where you are, the heart where you want to be.
I have found that I am not a space where people want to live, at least not without decorating first.
It's much better to be apart and wish you were together than to be together and wish you were apart.
I think America's obsession with guns and with violence in media and society is a horrible sickness.
Why is it that weeks and months and years go by so quickly, all in a blur, but moments last forever?
Voice is not just the sound that comes from your throat, but the feelings that come from your words.
There is real power in seeing yourself as a hero. Because then you believe that you can do anything.
Basic income is not a utopia, it's a practical business plan for the next step of the human journey.