I played with an idea, and grew willful; tossed it into the air; transformed it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent with fancy, and winged it with paradox.

The best way to appreciate your job is to imagine yourself without one.

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

Always forgive your enemies nothing annoys them so much.

It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.

Everyone may not be good, but there's always something good in everyone. Never judge anyone shortly because every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

Be yourself; everyone else is taken.

Women are made to be loved, not understood.

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.

I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.

If you hit bottom, there's a whole lot of people here to help you up

When you're in college you haven't had that much life. Parents, school, assorted youth activities—that's about it.

Do not manage as if you had ten thousand years before you. Look you death stands at your elbow make the most of your minute and be good for something while it is in your power.

Only when we realize that there is no eternal, unchanging truth or absolute truth can we arouse in ourselves a sense of intellectual responsibility.

I know I can act. There aren't too many other jobs I know how to do

Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life . . .

When we are born we are magical and loving and full of wonder. But darkness and ignorance surround us at every corner. Until the day someone calls us a monster or a devil and we believe them.

Certitude is seized by some minds, not because there is any philosophical justification for it, but because such minds have an emotional need for certitude.

Why the hell wouldn't you want to be one of the fabulous people, the life enhancers, who look interesting and smell luscious and who dare to be gorgeously more fascinating than their neighbors?

Music has always been transnational; people pick up whatever interests them, and certainly a lot of classical music has absorbed influences from all over the world.