I was brought up a Catholic and I was quite fervent, because I was sent to a convent school.

Fairy tales are about money, marriage, and men. They are the maps and manuals that are passed down from mothers and grandmothers to help them survive.

The female form provides the solution in which the essence itself is held; she is passio, and acted upon, the male is actio, the mover.

Meanings of all kinds flow through the figures of women, and they often do not include who she herself is.

If you want to learn about a culture, you look at what buildings the people lived in but you also want to know about their cosmos.

The more one knows fairy tales the less fantastical they appear; they can be vehicles of the grimmest realism, expressing hope against all the odds with gritted teeth.

The vocabulary of pleasure depends on the imagery of pain.

The sombre-suited masculine world of the Protestant religion is altogether too much like a gentlemen's club to which the ladies are only admitted on special days.

Wonder has no opposite; it springs up already doubled in itself, compounded of dread and desire at once, attraction and recoil, producing a thrill, the shudder of pleasure and of fear.

When I was young, I did actually model and was much photographed by famous photographers. But I was always a bookworm.

I avoid looking in the mirror.

If you think your life is meaningless, then think about the starving kids in the world and imagine what they would say about the things you take for granted in your life.

That I survived the Holocaust and went on to love beautiful girls, to talk, to write, to have toast and tea and live my life - that is what is abnormal.

The irony of prison is that it takes years and years and years to plan an elaborate escape, but all you have is years and years and years.

Success often comes to those who dare to act. It seldom goes to the timid who are ever afraid of the consequences.

A harmonious combination... enough abstraction that the image is sustained by the eye; enough reality that it is sustained by reason and experience. Share this quote with a friend

But to me the actual sound of the words is all important; I feel always that the words complete the music and must never be swallowed up in it.

A quarrelsome man deserves no honors.

In a family argument, if it turns out you are right, apologize at once.

The best revenge against bullies is absolutely, resolutely, never to let them change who you are. Know that whatever bullies say or do - it comes from their weakness, not yours.

Life began for me, when I ceased to admire and began to remember.