a woman may be called a wife and mother for most of her life, while a man is called a husband and father only at his funeral.

Gloom we have always with us, a rank and sturdy weed, but joy requires tending.

We don't get enough pampering. If we were once the only child of an adoring mother, we developed a taste for it; if not, we developed a thirst for it.

Dogwoods are great optimists. Daffodils wait and see, crouching firmly underground just in case spring doesn't come this year, but dogwoods have faith.

Cats vary so widely that all data is meaningless and the professional classifiers gnash their teeth trying to come up with even a single fact common to all.

True ownership of anything requires time.

New York was where we wanted to live when we were finally grown up, and drink martinis and stay out past bedtime.

There is no 'cat language.' Painful as it is for us to admit, they don't need one!

By and large, people who enjoy teaching animals to roll over will find themselves happier with a dog.

The only people who still read poetry are poets, and they mostly read their own.

Life, after we'd had a few millennia to observe it, turned out to be dreadfully unfair, so we invented sports.

There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.

The only true wisdom is in knowing that with love you can win the world.

Old birds are hard to pluck.

What we need is a rebirth of satire of dissent of irreverence of an uncompromising insistence that phoniness is phony and platitudes are platitudinous.

I wanted to finally feel better about understanding. I painted my wife because I wanted to understand her. I can talk to her, but I didn't understand why I was so compelled.

America's leadership is essential. America's resources are vast. America's opportunities are unprecedented.

True art tries not to attract attention in order to be noticed.

But my big thing was always the blues.

It may seem bizarre, but in my opinion science offers a surer path to God than religion.