"Good intentions are not enough. They've never put an onion in the soup yet."

“The independent girl is truly of quite modern origin, and usually is a most bewitching little piece of humanity.”

“It is also certain that when we assent to some piece of reasoning when our perception of it is lacking, then either we go wrong, or, if we do stumble on the truth, it is by accident, so that we cannot be sure that we are not in error.”

“And so it turned out that only a life similar to the life of those around us, merging with it without a ripple, is genuine life, and that an unshared happiness is not happiness.”

Source : Roger Martin du Gard, Boris Leonidovich Pasternak, Gabriela Mistral (1971). “Roger Martin du Gard: Gabriela Mistral ; Boris Pasternak”

“It would be wonderful to have a guru; it would be like having a social worker or a personal trainer, not that people who had either of these necessarily appreciated the advice they received.”

“All stories teach us something, and promise us something, whether they're true or invented, legend or fact.”

“The winners in life treat their body as if it were a magnificent spacecraft that gives them the finest transportation and endurance for their lives.”

“Prayer is the surest remedy against the devil and besetting sins.”

“I'd bought a lot of really challenging, cutting-edge Joel-Peter Witkin photographs very early on. There were severed heads and amputated feet and hands in them - gruesome stuff. I had them all around the house, and if someone couldn't relate to it in some artistic way and instead just said "Yuck," then there probably wouldn't have been anywhere for us to go.”