I have often thought I would have been quite happy as a spider.Even a spider has the right to a mate.

Happiness is like the first blissful intoxication of morphine.It doesn't last very long.

All beauty must have its imperfections, all happiness its share of sorrow.

Killing is like riding, you see. One never really loses the knack.

And it's really very difficult to kill someone when all your inner instincts would oblige you to take off your hat first!

Great beauty is often perceived by human senses as pain.

Hell is not a place, it's a state of mind and body; hell is obsession with a voice, a face, a name.

Death was the ultimate power and I his eager, willing apprentice.

I can make anything disappear, if I really want to.

In point of fact I was a perfectly devoted and dutiful little Catholic—until the day I learned that animals have no souls.

I had reached up and pulled the castle of dreams down around him.

Think you only kings have power? Stand on a stage and hold the hearts of men in your hands. Make them laugh with a gesture, cry with a word. Make them love you. And you will know what power is.

Breath is breath.

Purity of heart is to will one thing.

My natural tendency is to complicate everything--and then to spray words and ideas onto everything afterwards. I've had to develop the habit of keeping things simple.

Perseverance does not equal worthiness. Next time you want to get my attention, wear something fun. Low-riding jeans are hot.

Once I'd chosen the songs, it seemed like it would just be a question then of recording them. But it's a case of trying to re-invent the songs; taking them in different directions.

It is not science that has destroyed the world, despite all the gloomy forebodings of the earlier prophets. It is man who has destroyed man.

It's a democracy and if I am outvoted, I have to accept the majority decisions.

I have a sense that many Americans, especially those like me with European or foreign parents, feel they have to invent their families just as they have to invent themselves.

Boredom and stupidity and patriotism, especially when combined, are three of the greatest evils of the world we live in.