We are the hero of our own story.

Every age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted.

In science, all facts, no matter how trivial or banal, enjoy democratic equality.

In violence, we forget who we are.

The suspense of a novel is not only in the reader, but in the novelist, who is intensely curious about what will happen to the hero.

Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism.

Being abroad makes you conscious of the whole imitative side of human behavior. The ape in man.

We are the hero of our own story.

I suppose everyone continues to be interested in the quest for the self, but what you feel when you're older, I think, is that you really must make the self.

The American character looks always as if it had just had a rather bad haircut, which gives it, in our eyes at any rate, a greater humanity than the European, which even among its beggars has an all too professional air.

The theater is the only branch of art much cared for by people of wealth; like canasta, it does away with the brother of talk after dinner.

Is it really so difficult to tell a good action from a bad one? I think one usually knows right away or a moment afterward, in a horrid flash of regret.

Liberty, as it is conceived by current opinion, has nothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behavior.

Labor is work that leaves no trace behind it when it is finished, or if it does, as in the case of the tilled field, this product of human activity requires still more labor, incessant, tireless labor, to maintain its identity as a "work" of man.

When an American heiress wants to buy a man, she at once crosses the Atlantic. The only really materialistic people I have ever met have been Europeans.

Europe is the unfinished negative of which America is the proof.

Every word she writes is a lie, including and and the.

The labor of keeping house is labor in its most naked state, for labor is toil that never finishes, toil that has to be begun again the moment it is completed, toil that is destroyed and consumed by the life process.

In politics, it seems, retreat is honorable if dictated by military considerations and shameful if even suggested for ethical reasons.

The immense popularity of American movies abroad demonstrates that Europe is the unfinished negative of which America is the proof.

I'm afraid I'm not sufficiently inhibited about the things that other women are inhibited about for me. They feel that you've given away trade secrets.

I am putting real plums into an imaginary cake.

People with bad consciences always fear the judgment of children.

Life for the European is a career; for the American it is a hazard.

If someone tells you he is going to make a "realistic decision," you immediately understand that he has resolved to do something bad.

You musn't force sex to do the work of love or love to do the work of sex.

We all live in suspense from day to day; in other words, you are the hero of your own story.

If someone tells you he is going to make a 'realistic decision', you immediately understand that he has resolved to do something bad.

Labor is work that leaves no trace behind it when it is finished, or if it does, as in the case of the tilled field, this product of human activity requires still more labor, incessant, tireless labor, to maintain its identity as a 'work' of man.

A Crow is known wherever he is met by his beautiful white dress, and his tall and elegant figure; the greater part of the men being six feet high.

I'm very much a masochist at heart.

The only time you fail is when you fall down and stay down.

People know Detroit for the cars, but the suburban areas of the city are really beautiful. It's much more inhabitable than people think. Many believe it's like Berlin at the end of World War II.

My popularity plunged three years ago and I didn't try to court publicity.

As a filmmaker, I don't want to limit myself to one kind of movie.

Worry about loving yourself first instead of loving the idea of other people loving you.

For all the billions of dollars created here, Silicon Valley is remarkably stingy when it comes to giving.

If some guys couldn't stand the heat, then they didn't belong in the major leagues. I don't know anybody who refused the World Series checks I helped them get.

One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is that you lose control.

You will certainly not doubt the necessity of studying astronomy and physics, if you are desirous of comprehending the relation between the world and Providence as it is in reality, and not according to imagination.

By competent evidence, is meant such as the nature of the thing to be proved requires; and by satisfactory evidence, is meant that amount of proof, which ordinarily satisfies an unprejudiced mind, beyond any reasonable doubt.

There is something sad about clothes laid in a tomb of trunks.

No, seriously, I really don't have much ill-will toward anyone these days; I just ignore the people that I dislike.

Better return half way than lose yourself.

As I grew up, I was continually to suffer hardships in different realms of life - in my family, in my relationship to Japanese society and in my way of living at large in the latter half of the twentieth century.

Writing was something I always liked, but it wasn't a career until I was laid off from my executive position in my 30s. I started a website because I was bored, unemployed and angry.

When I am really angry, I clam up, go cold.

Even a blind man opens his eyes to worship the goddess of his solitary sighs.

There is never enough gold to redeem all the currency in circulation.