Barbara Quotes

Although I myself don't go to church or synagogue, I do, whether it's superstition or whatever, pray every time I get on a plane. I just automatically do it. I say the same thing every time.

And I really do believe that the most important thing is the way you live your life on earth. But I think it's enormously comforting to believe that you're going to see your loved ones.

The First Lady is going to be criticized no matter what she does.

when your child is in trouble, the first thing you do is blame yourself.

I don't know about you, but I can never get enough David Letterman.

I am a huge admirer of Elizabeth I, and this intriguing biography gives a wonderful picture of the era.

Bookstores see a book by a woman and they put it in the romance section.

Government remains the paramount area of folly because it is there that men seek power over others - only to lose it over themselves.

I'm not a competitive person, and I think women like me because they don't think I'm competitive, just nice.

I was the kind nobody thought could make it. I had a funny Boston accent. I couldn't pronounce my R's. I wasn't a beauty.

A true smile is when the mouth and the heart coordinate with each other.

What you're really supposed to be doing is whatever makes your heart sing.

This story about good food begins in a quick-stop convenience market.

Misunderstanding is my cornerstone. It's everyone's, come to think of it. Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet.

I learned to write by reading the kind of books I wished I'd written.

When you start using senses you've neglected, your reward is to see the world with completely fresh eyes.

How pointless life could be, what a foolish business of inventing things to love, just so you could dread losing them.

There was a roaring in my ears and I lost track of what they were saying. I believe it was the physical manifestation of unbearable grief.

If we can't, as artists, improve on real life, we should put down our pencils and go bake bread.

I’ve seen how you can’t learn anything when you’re trying to look like the smartest person in the room.

Listen. Slide the weight from your shoulders and move forward. You are afraid you might forget, but you never will. You will forgive and remember.

Life proceeds, it enrages. The untouched ones spend their luck without a thought, believing they deserve it.

Even feigning surprise, pretending it was unexpected and saying a ritual thanks, is surely wiser than just expecting everything so carelessly.

For Castro, freedom starts with education. And if literacy alone were the yardstick, Cuba would rank as one of the freest nations on Earth.

If people are watching television by themselves, it makes them part of a community of people laughing.

Vengeance is not the point: change is.

Images are made palpable, ironed flat by technology and, in turn, dictate the seemingly real through the representative.

For 50 percent of Americans marriage is forever, for the rest of us there is another adventure.

I think most working relationships could benefit by excluding personal matters from the office chatter.

The secret of living a full life is to be fully engaged, moment to moment, to have something in your life that engages you so that there's nothing missing.

I have confidence that we can form this kind of national community.

Our physical unity has gone far ahead of our moral unity.

Celebrities used to be found in clusters, like oysters - and with much the same defensive mechanisms.

I don't invest in rich kids' businesses.

Don't wait for the muse. She has a lousy work ethic. Writers just write.

I didn't know I was compared to Elizabeth Montgomery, but I think that I'm in very good company with her.

Learning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced

Cats always pick the laps of the people who don't like them.

Animals are like people because people are animals.

I think Paul Sarbanes and his wife Christine socialized with them [George and Heather Mitchell] more than I did, but we all hung out, or we saw each other in groups.

I'm not pretending to be ingenuous; I know what I'm doing.

No longer are there immutable standards by which to judge ourselves. Image has overtaken reality.

Transcendent Oneness does not require self-examination, self-help, or self-work. It requires self-loss.

Small children do not belong at an adult party, and especially should not be used like trained midgets to help serve martinis.

It seems to me that there must be an ecological limit to the number of paper pushers the Earth can sustain.

If it's a woman, it's caustic; if it's a man, it's authoritative.

Growing food was the first activity that gave us enough prosperity to stay in one place, form complex social groups, tell our stories, and build our cities.

the conspicuous consumption of limited resources has yet to be accepted widely as a spiritual error, or even bad manners

A certain feeling comes from throwing your good life away, and it is one part rapture.

You can be as earnest and ridiculous as you need to be, if you don't attempt it in isolation. The ridiculously earnest are known to travel in groups. And they are known to change the world.