There's nothing particularly wrong with being more pessimistic than optimistic. Optimism is broad-based, non-detail-oriented thinking; pessimism is detail-oriented thinking.

Not being funny doesn't make you a bad person. Not having a sense of humor does.

Well into adulthood, writing has never gotten easier. It still only ever begins badly, and there are no guarantees that this is not the day when the jig is finally up.

Altruism is innate, but it's not instinctual. Everybody's wired for it, but a switch has to be flipped.

Being a stranger was like being dead, and brought to mind how, in a book he had read that most folks misunderstood one common state: The flip side of love is indifference, not hate.

We’re creatures of contact regardless of whether/ we kiss or we wound. Still, we must come together.

There is nothing so cleansing or reassuring as a vicarious sadness.

Youth is not wasted on the young, it is perpetrated on the young.

Central to living a life that is good, is a life that's forgiving.

I am neither spontaneous nor ready for anything.

I have managed to establish an identity that is based on my internal self, and for that I feel tremendously lucky.

Moonlight and high wind.Dark poplars toss, insinuate the sea.

What girls do to each other is beyond description. No Chinese torture comes close.

This is the ultimate cruelty, isn't it? That I can talk and talk and to anyone listening, it's only air--too rich a diet to be swallowed by a mundane world.

The Israeli accent wasn't one that I was overly familiar with so had to learn from scratch but I was very fortunate I had the right amount of time.

A good jolly is worth what you pay for it.

My name is Giovanni Giorgio , but everybody calls me Giorgio.

I am sticking as closely to my subject as I can; for my subject is precisely this, that it is the masses, the majority

We're the real estate industry - not the manufacturers.

Humility, however deep it be, neither disquiets nor troubles nor disturbs the soul; it is accompanied by peace, joy and tranquillity.