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 good is it being Marilyn Monroe? Why can’t I just be an ordinary woman?

I like being able to be on the inside of music, rather than on the outside listening to it.

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?

When you have nobody you can make a cup of tea for, when nobody needs you, that’s when I think life is over.

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

The devil has put a penalty on all things we enjoy in life. Either we suffer in health or we suffer in soul or we get fat.

There is no object so large but that at a great distance from the eye it does not appear smaller than a smaller object near.

How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.

Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships.

If you can feel that Mother Earth is in you, and you are Mother Earth, then you are not any longer afraid to die because the earth is not dying. Like a wave appears and disappears and appears again.

Life becomes harder for us when we live for others, but it also becomes richer and happier.

If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom?

All through my writing life, I’ve had this impulse to write autobiographical works.

Old age: the crown of life, our play’s last act.

To me, constructive criticism is when people take ownership of their ideas. That’s why I don’t listen to anything that’s anonymous. But it’s hard; when there’s something hurtful out there, I still want to read it over and over and memorize it and explain my point of view to the person.

We usually lose today, because there has been a yesterday, and tomorrow is coming.

We grow older, but we do not change. We become more sophisticated, but at bottom we continue to resemble our young selves, eager to listen to the next story and the next, and the next.

Life is just one damned thing after another.

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.

In the course of history, men come to see that iron necessity is neither iron nor necessary.

I like to recede away from classifications. You might say that indicates a fundamental lack of commitment. I suppose that’s true to some degree.

When I was married, I definitely went through a lying period.

Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.

Misfortune seldom intrudes upon the wise man; his greatest and highest interests are directed by reason throughout the course of life.

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.

I’m not good at talking about myself.

The only way to take sorrow out of death is to take love out of life.

I don’t want to get into it, but if you know someone, it doesn’t mean you agree with everything they say or they do.

The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.

Many a man thinks he is patient when, in reality, he is indifferent.

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

Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure, only death can stop it.

The ego is only an illusion, but a very influential one. Letting the ego-illusion become your identity can prevent you from knowing your true self. Ego, the false idea of believing that you are what you have or what you do, is a backwards way of assessing and living life.

Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.

Nothing can be by itself alone, no one can be by himself or herself alone, everyone has to inter-be with every one else. That is why, when you look outside, around you, you can see yourself.

I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.

Whether or not I like a piece of data has very little bearing on whether or not I am likely to accept it.

Life comes with many challenges. The ones that should not scare us are the ones we can take on and take control of.

People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.

We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end.

I’ve learned a lot since I was a new mother. My approach to struggle and shame now is to talk to yourself like you’d talk to someone you love and reach out to tell your story.

Choosing to be positive and having a grateful attitude is going to determine how you’re going to live your life.

Age merely shows what children we remain.

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.

No one can outrun death. It will catch up to all of us eventually.

Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.

I am grateful to be a woman. I must have done something great in another life.

Each life is made up of mistakes and learning, waiting and growing, practicing patience and being persistent.

And were an epitaph to be my story I’d have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.

The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully.

I’ll die a crazy old man!

I think everyone should approach relationships from the perspective of playing it straight and giving someone the benefit of the doubt. Until he establishes that this is a game. And if it’s a game, you need to win. The best thing to do is just walk away from the table.

All of my misfortunes come from having thought too well of my fellows.

The valiant never taste of death but once.

A man’s own judgment should be the final appeal in all that relates to himself.

If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values – that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.

Americans are far more remarkable than we give ourselves credit for. We’ve been so busy damning ourselves for years. We’ve done it all, and yet we don’t take credit for it.

I have never smuggled anything in my life. Why, then, do I feel an uneasy sense of guilt on approaching a customs barrier?

I have found out in later years that we were very poor, but the glory of America is that we didn’t know it then.