I don’t see myself as beautiful, because I can see a lot of flaws. People have really odd opinions. They tell me I’m skinny, as if that’s supposed to make me happy.

There is a rollicking kindness that looks like malice.

It’s rare for anyone to value the opinions of a teenage girl.

A man’s only as old as the woman he feels.

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.

I still consider myself a little, fat kid from Hawaii.

The foolish man conceives the idea of ‚self.‘ The wise man sees there is no ground on which to build the idea of ‚self;‘ thus, he has a right conception of the world and well concludes that all compounds amassed by sorrow will be dissolved again, but the truth will remain.

At the end of the day, women are a distraction. Whether you realize it or not.

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

What really matters is how God sees me. He isn’t concerned with labels; he is concerned about the state of man’s soul.

It sometimes makes people feel better about themselves, you know, to put other people down, or make fun of them, or maybe make mockery of their work and that doesn’t make me feel good at all.

We view things not only from different sides, but with different eyes; we have no wish to find them alike.

A man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.

To us also, through every star, through every blade of grass, is not God made visible if we will open our minds and our eyes.

Small is the number of people who see with their eyes and think with their minds.

I’m ugly.

As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them.

No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others.

How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

There are people who don’t like capitalism, and people who don’t like PCs. But there’s no-one who likes the PC who doesn’t like Microsoft.

Really, I have to laugh because there was a whole set of stories that made me sound like the Dragon Lady, you know, ‚tough this and tough that.‘ Then there is this business about ‚gooey.‘ The bottom line is I am a pragmatic idealist.

I notice that young men go to the universities in order to become doctors or philosophers or anything, so long as it is a title, and that many go in for those professions who are utterly unfit for them, while others who would be very competent are prevented by business or their daily cares, which keep them away from letters.

My aim is to make the poor look rich and the rich look poor.

How people themselves perceive what they are doing is not a question that interests me.

To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.

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

It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by the reason.

I know now that there is no one thing that is true – it is all true.

I have known people who are working class or craftsmen, who happen to be more intellectual than professors.

‚Tis best to weigh the enemy more mighty than he seems.

There are various eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes: and as a result there are various truths, and as a result there is no truth.

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

But to me nothing – the negative, the empty – is exceedingly powerful.

It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.

Everybody wants to be me. What can I say?

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.

I was called ‚Dumbo,‘ like the elephant, as a child because I couldn’t understand things at school.

In the public eye, girls and women with strong perspectives are hated. If you’re a girl with an opinion, people just hate you. There are still people who are afraid of successful women, and that’s so lame.

Yes, Mother. I can see you are flawed. You have not hidden it. That is your greatest gift to me.

I love people talking about me; I love anybody just looking at me.

How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god.

Most people wouldn’t know music if it came up and bit them on the ass.

The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.

In Italy they take cheap cloth and make it look expensive, but I take expensive cloth and make it look cheap. They just don’t understand.

It is really funny when people say you’d be obvious for a great villain.

There are very few people who really appreciate my shows. People come to the show and they pay and they enjoy it, but I don’t really think most people really understand what they’ve seen.

No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly.

When I look back over my life it’s almost as if there was a plan laid out for me – from the little girl who was so passionate about animals who longed to go to Africa and whose family couldn’t afford to put her through college. Everyone laughed at my dreams. I was supposed to be a secretary in Bournemouth.

The little man is still a man.

I don’t mind making jokes, but I don’t want to look like one.

Not being beautiful was the true blessing. Not being beautiful forced me to develop my inner resources. The pretty girl has a handicap to overcome.

It’s considered acceptable in our culture to approach perfect strangers, as often or not who may be in extremis, and evangelise. I don’t see why that’s considered a normal thing.

Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.

The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant.

There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see.

It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see.

We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.

Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterward, and you will have the truth about him.

I was terrible in English. I couldn’t stand the subject. It seemed to me ridiculous to worry about whether you spelled something wrong or not, because English spelling is just a human convention – it has nothing to do with anything real, anything from nature.