I’m seeing the world partially through the eyes of a kid. Not all the time. There’s no black and white to it. But sometimes I’m seeing it like I’m 4.

To a profound pessimist about life, being in danger is not depressing.

You can be a rank insider as well as a rank outsider.

I never think about myself as an artist working in this time. I think about it in macro.

If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.

You will always have partial points of view, and you’ll always have the story behind the story that hasn’t come out yet. And any form of journalism you’re involved with is going to be up against a biased viewpoint and partial knowledge.

At the age when other children, I imagine, experience their first ‚feeling‘ for a person, or for art, or for religion, I was affectionate, good, and even pious: by that I mean that under the influence of my mother, I was devoted to the Child Jesus.

When I was five, I think, that’s when I started wanting to be an actress. I loved to play. I didn’t like the world around me because it was kind of grim, but I loved to play house. It was like you could make your own boundaries.

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

From childhood on, I did sit in the courtroom watching my father argue cases and talk to juries.

When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

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.

But O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes.

I always was a rich person because money’s not related to happiness.

If I think more about death than some other people, it is probably because I love life more than they do.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

We should not say that one man’s hour is worth another man’s hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing: he is at the most time’s carcass.

I really haven’t had that exciting of a life. There are a lot of things I wish I would have done, instead of just sitting around and complaining about having a boring life. So I pretty much like to make it up. I’d rather tell a story about somebody else.

I went to a public school through sixth grade, and being good at tests wasn’t cool.

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

When I am writing, I do not distinguish between the natural and supernatural. Everything seems real. That is my world, you could say.

Fame will go by and, so long, I’ve had you, fame. If it goes by, I’ve always known it was fickle. So at least it’s something I experience, but that’s not where I live.

I imagine that yes is the only living thing.

When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.

I think the foundation of everything in my life is wonder.

To observations which ourselves we make, we grow more partial for th‘ observer’s sake.

Everybody believes in something and everybody, by virtue of the fact that they believe in something, uses that something to support their own existence.

I think that as you grow up, as you get older, we can’t get bitter, we can’t get jaded.

Do creative, social, and civic attitudes change depending on where we live? Yes, I think so.

I like some animals more than some people, some people more than some animals.

The reason we have poverty is that we have no imagination. There are a great many people accumulating what they think is vast wealth, but it’s only money… they don’t know how to enjoy it, because they have no imagination.

No one but a fool is always right.

People see things differently and remember things differently. It’s why if somebody robs a liquor store and there are four witnesses they’ll often disagree.

Where I grew up – I grew up on the north side of Akron, lived in the projects. So those scared and lonely nights – that’s every night. You hear a lot of police sirens, you hear a lot of gunfire. Things that you don’t want your kids to hear growing up.

Who is richer? The man who is seen, but cannot see? Or the man who is not being seen, but can see?

In the real world, children love me.

What’s real freedom? Real freedom is being able to not have my way and still be just as happy as if I did.

Every wall is a door.

My mother did not like children.

When you’re born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front row seat.

Go up in an airplane. Go high enough, and it’s like we don’t even exist.

The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.

Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.

History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

Rather leave the crime of the guilty unpunished than condemn the innocent.

I’ve never been able to witness the birth of an idea. It seems as if one second, there’s nothing particularly going on, and the next second, something is there. It’s coming up out of my unconscious, up from places that I don’t even know where they are.

I am not a self-help writer. I am a self-problem writer. When people read my books, I provoke some things. I cannot justify my work. I do my work; it is up to them to classify it, to judge.

I’m convinced that no one can amount to a damn in the arts if he becomes sweetly reasonable, seeing all sides of a picture, forgiving all sins.

Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.

What is normal? Normal was yesterday. If you lose a leg, one day you’re hopping around on one leg, so you know the difference.

Being happy is a matter of personal taste.

I am a child but I have to think and act like a woman, this business forces you to.

I’m not confused. I’m just well mixed.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.

Those Dutchmen had hardly any imagination or fantasy, but their good taste and their scientific knowledge of composition were enormous.

The Public is merely a multiplied ‚me.‘

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.

If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.

One who is too insistent on his own views, finds few to agree with him.

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.