My foregrounds are imaginary, my backgrounds real.

Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.

Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.

I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings.

It seems to me that I have always existed and that I possess memories that date back to the Pharaohs.

Stupidity is something unshakable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it; it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.

Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

A man is a critic when he cannot be an artist, in the same way that a man becomes an informer when he cannot be a soldier.

I tried to discover, in the rumor of forests and waves, words that other men could not hear, and I pricked up my ears to listen to the revelation of their harmony.

There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.

Human beings can reach such desperate solitude that they may cross a boundary beyond which words cannot serve, and at such moments there is nothing left for them but to bark.

My first rule of war, Cat-never give the enemy his wish

...if George Washington founded the nation, John Marshall defined it.

I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.

I'm going to be focused on doing everything I possibly can to help solve the climate crisis.

The shame would be if Democrats get thrown out of office without ever having tried Democratic policies.

Art is a partnership not only between those who are living but between those who are dead and those who are yet to be born.

If you want to be happy, try only to please God, not people.

I don't know why people carry guns. Guns kill people.

With all the talent around, it's sort of amazing that a woman could be up here with us.