If you create an act, you create a habit. If you create a habit, you create a character. If you create a character, you create a destiny.

We owe to the Middle Ages the two worst inventions of humanity - romantic love and gunpowder.

Without a family, man, alone in the world, trembles with the cold.

The first recipe for happiness is: avoid too lengthy meditation on the past.

We can talk frankly about our defects only to those who recognise our qualities.

An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.

A happy marriage is a long conversation which always seems too short.

A marriage without conflicts is almost as inconceivable as a nation without crises.

We appreciate frankness from those who like us. Frankness from others is called insolence.

Conversation would be vastly improved by the constant use of four simple words: I do not know.

A successful marriage is an edifice that must be rebuilt every day.

We must clean the lens of our hearts to see the state of our souls. However, too often the former is too dirty to even know that the latter exists.

Oh my love, you are my life boat in the ocean of my life.

Smoke rose from the barrel of the gun like a serpent crawling up from its wicker basket

If one judges love according to the greatest part of the effects it produces, it would appear to resemble rather hatred than kindness.

I never quit. I just got fired.

Be not afraid to pray--to pray is right. Pray, if thou canst, with hope; but ever pray, Though hope be weak or sick with long delay; Pray in the darkness, if there be no light.

Abandon fancy theologies and imaginary ideas and do some ordinary daily work... {Engage in this work with} unswerving kindness and unending patience.

I like the blues a lot. I grew up on it.

Even if you are a best-seller you feel insecure because it is all so unpredictable.

Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny