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.

Nothing defines the quality of life in a community more clearly than people who regard themselves, or whom the consensus chooses to regard, as mentally unwell.

Authentic personal brands are built on the foundation of purpose

Not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point which means at the point of highest reality.

Editing might be a bloody trade. But knives aren't the exclusive property of butchers. Surgeons use them too.

When I can no longer create anything, I'll be done for.

Where did you come from, baby dear? Out of the everywhere and into here.

I made observations for three hours last night, and am almost ill today from fatigue; still I have worked all day, trying to reduce the places, and mean to work hard again tonight.

You remind me of myself ” Bes continued “back when I was a young dwarf. You got a stubborn streak. When it comes to girl problems you’re clueless.

America, I am not ignoring you.

People who live in the past generally are afraid to compete in the present. I've got my faults, but living in the past is not one of them. There's no future in it.

Let all the laws be clear, uniform and precise for interpreting laws is almost always to corrupt them.