Most movies are not very good. Most people know it and like to see them anyway.

People have been modeling their lives after films for years, but the medium is somehow unsuited to moral lessons, cautionary tales or polemics of any kind.

Idle people are often bored and bored people, unless they sleep a lot, are cruel. It is not accident that boredom and cruelty are great preoccupations in our time.

Bored people, unless they sleep a lot, are cruel.

Lyda was an exuberant, even a dramatic gardener.... She was always holding up a lettuce or a bunch of radishes with an air of resolute courage, as though she had shot them herself.

Fear . . . is forward. No one is afraid of yesterday.

There follows a little obscenity here, a dash of philosophy there, considerable whining overall, and a modern satirical novel is born.

My dislike has no consequences. It accrues only in my mind—like preserves on a shelf or guns zeroing in, and never firing.

No one ever confides a secret to one person only. No one destroys all copies of a document.

My capacity for having a good time exists. It surfaces, however, on odd occasions.

The whole magic of a plot requires that somebody be impeded from getting something over with.

I love pregnancy and the bump and the whole thing.

It is not being out at heels that makes a man discontented, it is being out at heart. To be contented is to be good friends with yourself.

What would your life be like if your body were your friend and ally?

This game the Persian Magi did invent, The force of Eastern wisdom to express: From thence to busy Europeans sent, And styled by modern Lombards pensive chess.

To create is divine, to reproduce is human.

The work will stand, no matter what.

I don't think of myself as a terribly confident person. But I have a survival mechanism that was instilled in me by my mother.

Get into the habit of saying, ''Speak, Lord,'' and life will become a romance.

I have tried to make sure I knew the law and what the most recent changes were, and I've applied the law to the facts. I have not lost sleep over the decisions I have made.

So many people are following fashion now. It's become fashion-tainment.