Although charismatic, James Dean is no Harrison Ford. In the majority of his movies, sooner or later he got the crap beaten out of him.

The functions of intellect are insufficient without courage, love, friendship, compassion and empathy.

The whisper of the dusk is night shedding its husk.

Where there is cake, there is hope. And there is always cake.

Petting, scratching, and cuddling a dog could be as soothing to the mind and heart as deep meditation and almost as good for the soul as prayer.

Nothing is worse than being alone on the evening of the day when one's cow has exploded.

Only once in a generation does anything as fresh as a vomiting detective come along.

The hands of every clock are shears, trimming us away scrap by scrap, and every time piece with a digital readout blinks us towards implosion.

Most people tend to think the best of those who are blessed with beauty; we have difficulty imagining that physical perfection can conceal twisted emotions or a damaged mind.

Any drunk who has tried to put his car where a lamppost stands is a self-educated physicist.

Given my heritage and the ordeal of my childhood, I sometimes wonder why I myself am not insane. Maybe I am.

Travel makes existentialists of us all.

If you cannot find beauty in the midst of ugliness to find heaven on earth, you will not be able to find heaven in space.

Sometimes when a philosopher's views are widely rejected by the world, the fault is not with the philosopher but with the world.

Inside every seventy-year-old is a thirty-five-year-old asking, 'What happened?

As a kid, I was always a tomboy, playing sport and doing martial arts. And I'm pretty opinionated - I've never been told that I'm a weak person.

I grew up in the Alps and France, and Barbie was my first exposure to the American woman. For me she was blonde, she was free and she was fun.

Having a little fun at my work does not make me any less of an artist.

If you wish the world to become loving and compassionate, become loving and compassionate yourself.

I'm a natural novelist. I'm interested in the person and the group, and how they mesh. And one of the ways I don't want them to mesh is for the person to be subsumed into the group.

To write a book about improvisation is partly a contradiction in terms. Improvisation is spontaneous. It's in the moment.