‎What a blight that woman is. Do you happen to know why? I lean toward a malignant fairy at her christening.

I have gone to [this bookshop] for years, always finding the one book I wanted - and then three more I hadn’t known I wanted.

I don't want to be married just to be married. I can't think of anything lonelier than spending the rest of my life with someone I can't talk to, or worse, someone I can't be silent with.

Men are more interesting in books than they are in real life.

Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers. How delightful if that were true.

Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books.

Think of it! We could have gone on longing for one another and pretending not to notice forever. This obsession with dignity can ruin your life if you let it.

Then I imagined a lifetime of having to cry to get him to be kind, and I went back to no again.

Do you arrange your books alphabetically? (I hope not.)

I did not throw 'The Shepherd Boy Sings in the Valley of Humiliation' at the audience. I threw it at the elocution mistress. I meant to cast it at her feet, but I missed.

I did not want to spend my time reading about people who never were, doing things they never did.

My father insisted I eat red meat. 'You'll lose your brain without food, ' he said. A meal to him without beef was starvation.

If the child is left to himself, he will think more and better, if less showily. Let him go and come freely, let him touch real things and combine his impressions for himself.

Give a good deed the credit of a good motive; and give an evil deed the benefit of the doubt.

Well first of all, it's hard to shoot a movie and break for a long time and then come back and do, in a sense, one of the biggest scenes that each character had.

Ecstasy can be painful when it's intense enough, when the kundalini surges enough. The ecstasy is so complete, it's overwhelming sometimes.

[Civil right leaders]themselves in their pronouncements will tell you they need white allies, they need white help, they need white this.

In short, if we wish to see anything sensible done about the situation, we will clearly have to do it ourselves.

There is a time when a man distinguishes the idea of felicity from the idea of wealth; it is the beginning of wisdom.

We have to be sure [students] understand that racial, national, ethnic, and religious hatred can lead to horrible tragedies.

Both music and acting are huge parts of my life - it's all about balance.