I would have been a disaster as a career politician. I would never have toed a party line.

I dislike pastiche; it attracts attention to the language only.

It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.

Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.

Fortitude. ... It means fixity of purpose. It means endurance. It means having the strength to live with what constrains you.

Feminism hasn't failed, it's just never been tried.

Truth can break the gates down, truth can howl in the street; unless truth is pleasing, personable and easy to like, she is condemned to stay whimpering at the back door.

If you have a good story idea, don't assume it must form a prose narrative. It may work better as a play, a screenplay or a poem. Be flexible.

The things you think are the disasters in your life are not the disasters really. Almost anything can be turned around: out of every ditch, a path, if you can only see it.

I didn't cry much after I was 35, but staggered stony-faced into middle age, a handkerchief still in my bag just in case.

You're only young once, they say, but doesn't it go on for a long time? More years than you can bear.

Pope is questioning my faith. I was very surprised to see it. But I am a Christian, and I'm proud of it.

ISIS is using the internet to recruit. ISIS is using the internet to intercept and do all sorts of things to our country. We have to be many steps ahead of them, and we will be.

That’s not a father. That’s a sperm donor. Forget him. He’s a mess. Concentrate on me. I’m terrific. (Linc Blaise)

The more haste, the less speed.

Aristoteles quidem ait: 'Omnes ingeniosos melancholicos esse.' Aristotle says that all men of genius are melancholy.

And because no matter who you are, if you believe in yourself and your dream, New York will always be the place for you.

You cannot of yourself move your arm or alter your position, situation, posture, do to other men good or evil, or effect the least change in the world.

Despite the theories traditionally taught in high-school social studies, the truth is: the more primitive the society, the more leisured its way of life.

We are ready to deal with any President [of U.S], but of course, and I mentioned that, it depends on the readiness of the future Administration.

If die I must, let me die drinking in an Inn.