Reality simply consists of different points of view.

The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery.

A man’s as miserable as he thinks he is.

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.

See things from the boy’s point of view.

When you read, I’m sure you don’t realize that your eyes are going backwards and forwards and to this place and that place. Mine don’t do that.

People take the little bit of information they’re fed, and they draw a picture of who you are. Most of the time, it’s wrong.

Instead of comparing our lot with that of those who are more fortunate than we are, we should compare it with the lot of the great majority of our fellow men. It then appears that we are among the privileged.

It’s a funny old world.

I mean, I feel like you get more bees with honey. But that doesn’t mean I don’t get frustrated in my life.

While victimhood in America is exalted, I don’t think our veterans should join those ranks.

Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise.

A lot of people think I’m a comedian.

The world is a looking glass and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.

‚Tis strange what a man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel.

The way people look at me these days – that’s the same way I looked at President Obama before I met him. We tend to forget that people who’ve attained a certain position are human.

To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia – to mistake an ordinary young woman for a goddess.

I don’t think it’s possible to have a sense of tragedy without having a sense of humor.

The image is one thing and the human being is another. It’s very hard to live up to an image, put it that way.

People wonder aloud about whether I am an okay mother. That is obviously painful because it’s so important to me. It’s hard to hear that people think I’m not a capable mother and a good person, that they just think I’m nuts.

There’s no way to remove the observer – us – from our perceptions of the world.

Little things console us because little things afflict us.

What I have is a malevolent curiosity. That’s what drives my need to write and what probably leads me to look at things a little askew. I do tend to take a different perspective from most people.

It’s very difficult for the American people to believe that our government, one of the richest on Earth, is also one of the stingiest on Earth.

Probably because I’m from a middle class family, I have that nature in me that I don’t get too excited with big things.

We identify in our experience a differentiation between what we do and what happens to us.

You’re going to die. You’re going to be dead. It could be 20 years, it could be tomorrow, anytime. So am I. I mean, we’re just going to be gone. The world’s going to go on without us. All right now. You do your job in the face of that, and how seriously you take yourself you decide for yourself.

What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy.

While working on my first five books, I kept wishing I was writing a novel. I thought until you wrote a novel, you weren’t taken seriously as a writer. It used to trouble me a lot, but nothing troubles me now, and besides, there has been a change. I think short stories are taken more seriously now than they were.

I think Mick Jagger would be astounded and amazed if he realized that to many people he is not a sex symbol, but a mother image.

Never in any case say I have lost such a thing, but I have returned it. Is your child dead? It is a return. Is your wife dead? It is a return. Are you deprived of your estate? Is not this also a return?

History is a set of lies agreed upon.

I don’t really care how the Patriots are perceived, truthfully. I really don’t. I really don’t. Look, if you’re a fan of our team, you root for us, you believe in our team, and you believe in what we’re trying to accomplish. If you’re not a fan of us, you have a different opinion.

I don’t want people to think of me as sexy.

Man only likes to count his troubles, but he does not count his joys.

There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.

People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong. Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?

There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.

When you are an actor, you have to stay inside this world, but when you are with the crew, on the outside, you are in the dirt, working through all the issues. It’s just a different way of working, and I think I preferred it.

Since God created the world, He also created reality.

Ultimately, a real understanding of history means that we face nothing new under the sun.

A lot of people have it a lot worse than you do.

My father probably thought the capital of the world was wherever he was at the time. It couldn’t possibly be anyplace else. Where he and his wife were in their own home, that, for them, was the capital of the world.

Wisdom stands at the turn in the road and calls upon us publicly, but we consider it false and despise its adherents.

Most people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.

In praise there is more obtrusiveness than in blame.

As soon as I hear a sound, it always suggests a mood to me.

People only see what they are prepared to see.

The ideas associated with the problems of the development of science, as far as I can see by looking around me, are not of the kind that everyone appreciates.

My own view is that every company requires a long-term view.

The true history of my administration will be written 50 years from now, and you and I will not be around to see it.

It is not possible to eat me without insisting that I sing praises of my devourer?

There is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect.

Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field.

For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.

In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful.

People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them.

Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.

It is only at the first encounter that a face makes its full impression on us.