The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we hold of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us.

Though intelligence is powerless to modify character, it is a dab hand at finding euphemisms for its weaknesses.

I simply haven't the nerve to imagine a being, a force, a cause which keeps the planets revolving in their orbits and then suddenly stops in order to give me a bicycle with three speeds.

Posing was the first job I did in which I understood what I was doing.

In an expanding universe, time is on the side of the outcast.

Fashion is what you adopt when you don't know who you are.

My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.

The poverty from which I have suffered could be diagnosed as 'Soho' poverty. It comes from having the airs and graces of a genius and no talent.

Vice is its own reward.

Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level.

No effort is required to define or even attain happiness, but enormous concentration is needed to abandon everything else.

Time' is the illusional domain occupied by the state of boredom. 'Space' is the infinite - reality - experienced by the state of higher creative consciousness. Choose wisely.

Overcome evil with good and hate with love.

But as I was saying, from my experiences, I think men tend to be more timid in expressing their feelings for you. Regardless, I always prefer a friendship first and foremost.

I think if someone is writing continuously for 10 years and has not changed their mind about something - there's something wrong with them. They're not really thinking.

And more importantly - what we have chosen to do

Look to the temple of the Lord as the great symbol of your membership.

Maggie Shipstead's prose is so graceful and muscular, so dazzling, so sure-handed and fearless, that at times I had to remind myself to breathe. Astonish Me is a treasure of small surprises.

I prefer to be an equal-opportunity offender of the guitar.

My dad was an entrepreneurial businessman, and maybe I got some of his ability.