Fully stripped down, an onion is a pile of scattered layers; it has no center.

A prettiness mummified by years of chalk dust.

In the middle of the silence in a writer's house lies an invalid: the book being worked on.

Words are the legs of the mind; they bear it about, carry It from point to point, bed it down at night, and keep it off the ground and out of the marsh and mists.

Schneider's characters, like Kundera's, are sentient and sophisticated figures at a time when the constraints of Communist rule persist but its energy has entirely vanished.

People get absorbed in chitchats with whomever they meet. They simply have to meet someone. Infinite energies are wasted in such chitchatting.

What use is Order without Chaos to challenge its rule? And by the same standard, what lies ahead for us if nothing opposes our ways?

Life is more than we get and possess. It is a mystery!

Those who seek to aspire are those who achieve Greatness.

Each of us brings to our job, whatever it is, our lifetime of experience and our values.

When somebody says to you the real USC is in L.A., tell them we were a school before they were a state.

We can't love our neighbors till we know how crooked their hearts are.

As a teenager, you're still discovering who you are, what your life is about, and who you want to be as a person. It's very intense.

An artist's studio should be a small space because small rooms discipline the mind and large ones distract it.

People build themselves up before you even have to deal with them.