It’s fun to be hopelessly in love. It’s dangerous, but it’s fun.

How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive.

Paradise was made for tender hearts; hell, for loveless hearts.

William Maxwell’s my favorite North American writer, I think. And an Irish writer who used to write for ‚The New Yorker‘ called Maeve Brennan, and Mary Lavin, another Irish writer. There were a lot of writers that I found in ‚The New Yorker‘ in the Fifties who wrote about the same type of material I did – about emotions and places.

I like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite new a thing. Muscles better and nerves more.

Friends are thieves of time.

Women are made to be loved, not understood.

Who could refrain that had a heart to love and in that heart courage to make love known?

The moment people feel they know what to expect from you, your spell on them is broken. More: You have ceded them power.

Smiling makes me feel weak and not in control and not powerful and small.

Anger is wonderful. It keeps you going. I’m angry about bankers. About the government.

I listen to music that is of our time and I just get angry.

The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.

If you would be loved, love, and be loveable.

When the people you love are gone, you’re alone.

My favorite thing in life is writing about life, specifically the parts of life concerning love. Because, as far as I’m concerned, love is absolutely everything.

For the woman, the man is a means: the end is always the child.

This is what is hardest: to close the open hand because one loves.

No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.

In married life three is company and two none.

Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.

The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life – knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live.

He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.

If I love you, what business is it of yours?

The demand to be loved is the greatest of all arrogant presumptions.

I spent a lot of years trying to outrun or outsmart vulnerability by making things certain and definite, black and white, good and bad. My inability to lean into the discomfort of vulnerability limited the fullness of those important experiences that are wrought with uncertainty: Love, belonging, trust, joy, and creativity to name a few.

I don’t really know that much about love, it turns out.

There is something curiously boring about somebody else’s happiness.

Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite – inspire fear and insecurity.

Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love.

Boys do cry, but I don’t think I shed a tear for a good chunk of my teenage years.

Choose your life’s mate carefully. From this one decision will come 90 percent of all your happiness or misery.

Faith, there hath been many great men that have flattered the people who ne’er loved them.

Nicki Minaj, I’m at MTV. I’m going to be honest with you: I love you. I like you. I want you; I want you to be mine. Only reason I’m not telling you this face to face is because I understand that you’re busy.

A pessimist? That’s a person who has been intimately acquainted with an optimist.

If women were particular about men’s characters, they would never get married at all.

I’m the kind of person who needs to feel like everything happens for a reason. When you date a guy and it goes badly, that’s horrible. But if you can write a song about it, then it was worth it.

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

I don’t like being alone.

I love our daughters more than anything in the world – more than life itself. And while that may not be the first thing that some folks want to hear from an Ivy-league-educated lawyer, it is truly who I am. So for me, being Mom-in-Chief is, and always will be, job number one.

As unique as we all are, an awful lot of us want the same things. We want to shake up our current less-than-fulfilling lives. We want to be happier, more loving, forgiving and connected with the people around us.

I’m not a serious person, and I don’t like serious people.

Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.

The difficult thing is that vulnerability is the first thing I look for in you and the last thing I’m willing to show you. In you, it’s courage and daring. In me, it’s weakness.

Let us fill our hearts with our own compassion – towards ourselves and towards all living beings.

The nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master and deserves one.

Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.

We must be our own before we can be another’s.

Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination.

Cry if you have a compound fracture, by all means. Or if your grandpa died. But otherwise, save it for your pillow.

There are many harsh lessons to be learned from the gambling experience, but the harshest one of all is the difference between having Fun and being Smart.

Within one’s own family, money is not the measure of things, unless the person is an absolute Scrooge. Only the most extreme kind of monster would put a price on everything.

One hearty laugh together will bring enemies into a closer communion of heart than hours spent on both sides in inward wrestling with the mental demon of uncharitable feeling.

When I woke up this morning my girlfriend asked me, ‚Did you sleep good?‘ I said ‚No, I made a few mistakes.‘

My wife thinks she’s better than me at puzzles. I haven’t given in on that one yet.

Country radio is much more like a family than any other group of people that I’ve met.

Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.

When we turn to one another for counsel we reduce the number of our enemies.

God is more interested in your future and your relationships than you are.

The reason children accept discipline from their parents is because they know their parents love them.

I have fun out there on the court, smiling, laughing, trying to have good demeanor.