Few persons who have ever sat for a portrait can have felt anything but inferior while the process is going on.

Self-love seems so often unrequited.

He fell in love with himself at first sight, and it is a passion to which he has always remained faithful. Self-love seems so often unrequited.

Parents - especially step-parents - are sometimes a bit of a disappointment to their children. They don't fulfill the promise of their early years.

Books do furnish a room.

Growing old's like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven't committed.

Parents are sometimes a bit of a disappointment to their children. They don't fulfill the promise of their early years.

Few persons who have ever sat for a portrait can have felt anything but inferior while the process is going on.

People think that because a novel's invented, it isn't true. Exactly the reverse is the case. Biography and memoirs can never be wholly true, since they cannot include every conceivable circumstance of what happened. The novel can do that.

The army is at once the worst place for egoists, and the best.

Self love seems so often unrequited.

Growing old is like beingincreasingly penalized for a crime you have not committed.

One of the worst things about life is not how nasty the nasty people are. You know that already. It is how nasty the nice people can be.

I'm an inexperienced reporter, and I'm still learning.

If I haven't any talent for writing books or newspaper articles, well, then I can always write for myself.

I think you have to draw from any character and bring it to yourself as much as possible.

Cash imposes a huge burden. We dont understand it as it is not immediately visible. It is a huge burden on society.

A threatened nation can react to uncertain dangers solely through administrative channels, to the truly embarrassing situation of perhaps overreacting.

I was doing a bit that stupid people should be slapped. But the more I did it, the more I didn't like that connotation, the violence and all that. The more I thought about it, I thought they should just wear signs. And, man, it just took off.

The work of art assumes the existence of the perfect spectator, and is indifferent to the fact that no such person exists.

Men killing other men really is an extraordinary phenomenon. Why does it happen? And how long has it gone on? And have the motives changed?

I could happily lean on a gate all the livelong day, chatting to passers-by about the wind and the rain. I do a lot of gate-leaning while I am supposed to be gardening; instead of hoeing, I lean on the gate, stare at the vegetable beds and ponder.

I remember at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Shaq always wanted me to show him steps over and over.

A good reputation is like the cypress; once cut, it never puts forth leaf again.

I consume music the way other people consume movies.

In an ideal world, I'd love to work on something that is on par with 'Lost' or better than 'Lost.'

The spread of civilisation may be likened to a fire; first, a feeble spark, next a flickering flame, then a mighty blaze, ever increasing in speed and power.

Doubts never end. If one doubt is removed, another takes its place. It is like removing the leaves of a tree one by one. Even if all the leaves are clipped off, new ones grow. The tree itself must be uprooted.

The laws in this city are clearly racist. All laws are racist. The law of gravity is racist.

A photograph is an invitation to look - and to look at looking.

When I was a kid, my parents gave me piano lessons and guitar lessons for a while, but I was never very good at it. I have big, sort of awkward hands. It's hard to keep going when you don't get any better.

Your behaviour can make friends and as well as opponents and enemies too. It depends on you.

From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality.

My perfect weekend is going for a walk with my family in the park. I don't think there's anything better.

I'm not writing fairy tales or object lessons.

I'm not a vegetarian. But I think people who are vegetarians, they are actually more virtuous than the rest of us. I think they should be admired.

Since the beginning of time, we have expected our leaders to be supermen, unlike mere mortals. We want them to be much greater than us so that we can look up to them.