Hope is cruel. Hope reminds me of what almost was. Hope makes the physical ache return.

You bring your own weather to the picnic.

The ugliest truth, in the end, was still better than the prettiest of lies.

Only bad writers think they're good.

Hope can be the most wonderful thing in the world or it can crush your heart like an eggshell.

..."better to have loved and lost" bullshit. Don't show me paradise and then burn it down.

There are three things that make a person a writer: inspiration, perspiration and desperation.

Trust is like that. You can break it for a good reason. But it still remains broken.

This is the price you pay for having a great father. You get the wonder, the joy, the tender moments - and you get the tears at the end, too.

A novel is like a sausage. You might like the final taste but you don't want to see how it was made.

Sometimes the loudest cries for help are silent.

Riches have never fascinated me, unless combined with the greatest charm or distinction.

In America, we have the greatest businesspeople in the world. We have to use them to negotiate our trade deals.

The most conventional customs cling to the table. Farmers who wouldn't drive a horse too hard expect pie three times a day.

What is the fatal charm of Italy? What do we find there that can be found nowhere else? I believe it is a certain permission to be human, which other places, other countries, lost long ago.

Never say never. For the right reason, over the years I've been auctioning off masks for charity and it's always for a good cause. I think you would regret it if you just sold it for money.

Even if any given terminology is a reflection of reality, by its very nature as a terminology it must be a selection of reality; and to this extent it must function also as a deflection of reality.

To Be Attacked by the Enemy Is Not a Bad Thing but a Good Thing.

That seems to be the haunting fear of mankind - that the advancement of women will sometime, someway, someplace, interfere with some man's comfort.

Grace is the most perplexing, powerful force in the universe, and, I believe, the only hope for our twisted, violent planet.

If you write a hundred short stories and they're all bad, that doesn't mean you've failed. You fail only if you stop writing.