There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.

My family is very good about visiting me, and other friends as well.

They consider me to have sharp and penetrating vision because I see them through the mesh of a sieve.

Of all the senses, sight must be the most delightful.

The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it’s dead for you.

You know you’re getting old when you get that one candle on the cake. It’s like, ‚See if you can blow this out.‘

What people see on court is another side of me; it’s not me.

Lovers often invest their first meetings with retrospective significance, as if to try to conjure the elements of the numinous out of the stubborn witness of the everyday.

Women are made to be loved, not understood.

A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.

People only see what they are prepared to see.

I’ve… been accused of being involved with every man I’m ever seen with or worked with. Maybe I have, maybe I ain’t. I never tell if I have.

There is a courtesy of the heart; it is allied to love. From its springs the purest courtesy in the outward behavior.

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

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.

Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can’t sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can’t sleep with the window open.

The wisest hustler can suddenly fall for the worst tramp and lose all of his money on her. The hustler is aware of his own weaknesses and openings to con. This awareness is his edge.

Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.

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

To know yet to think that one does not know is best; Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty.

I tended to place my wife under a pedestal.

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.

All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.

The components of anxiety, stress, fear, and anger do not exist independently of you in the world. They simply do not exist in the physical world, even though we talk about them as if they do.

I think I am smart unless I am really, really in love, and then I am ridiculously stupid.

If you want to give up the admiration of thousands of men for the distain of one, go ahead, get married.

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

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Love does not dominate; it cultivates.

There are women who can make you feel more with their bodies and their souls, but these are the exact women who will turn the knife into you right in front of the crowd. Of course, I expect this, but the knife still cuts.

I’m working at trying to be a Christian, and that’s serious business. It’s like trying to be a good Jew, a good Muslim, a good Buddhist, a good Shintoist, a good Zoroastrian, a good friend, a good lover, a good mother, a good buddy – it’s serious business.

Marriage is scary to me, man.

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

Even if the politics needed doesn’t exist today, we still need to use our voices to make sure that the people in power are focused on the right things. Because this is a democracy, and in a democracy, people are the ones who run the country.

When you are young, you cannot imagine being disabled. You imagine you would conquer it somehow. As I’ve got older, I can imagine it; I can see how life narrows in. I feel compassion for my mother now.

When I’m 40 and nobody wants to see me in a sparkly dress anymore, I’ll be like: ‚Cool, I’ll just go in the studio and write songs for kids.‘

If I love you, I show you I love you every day. Little things, big things.

The more you are talked about the less powerful you are.

If misery loves company, misery has company enough.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.

Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.

It was really hard for them to intimidate me. They felt I was intimidating. One of the growers had a name for me: I think it was ‚dragon lady‘ or something like it.

The love of the family, the love of one person can heal. It heals the scars left by a larger society. A massive, powerful society.

Power has only one duty – to secure the social welfare of the People.

A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species. The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning.

I soothe my conscience now with the thought that it is better for hard words to be on paper than that Mummy should carry them in her heart.

There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation’s braggart lords.

High office teaches decision making, not substance. It consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it. Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered; they learn how to make decisions but not what decisions to make.

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.

I’ll die a crazy old man!

I have rules for a lot of areas of my life. Love is not going to be one of them.

I never set out to be weird. It was always other people who called me weird.

A friend is one soul abiding in two bodies.

Mostly, my flying has been solo, but the preparation for it wasn’t. Without my husband’s help and encouragement, I could not have attempted what I have. Ours has been a contented and reasonable partnership, he with his solo jobs and I with mine. But always with work and play together, conducted under a satisfactory system of dual control.

We had problems like all families but we had a lot of love. I was extremely loved. We always felt we had each other.

Every single one of the guys that I’ve written songs about has been tracked down on MySpace by my fans.

If I held you any closer I would be on the other side of you.

Jump out the window if you are the object of passion. Flee it if you feel it. Passion goes, boredom remains.

In Europe first and now in America, elected men have taken it upon themselves to indebt their people to create an atmosphere of dependency. And why? For their own selfish need to increase their own personal power.

Power is not alluring to pure minds.