I was very studious, too much. I would never go out at weekends. I was very serious. You should have seen me in class - I was blushing and sweating every time the teacher asked me something.

It's one of the worst-kept secrets of family life that all parents have a preferred son or daughter, and the rules for acknowledging it are the same everywhere: The favored kids recognize their status and keep quiet about it - the better to preserve the good thing they've got going and to keep their siblings off their back.

Jeffrey Kluger

It is difficult to see ourselves as we are. Sometimes we are fortunate enough to have good friends, lovers or others who will do us the good service of telling us the truth about ourselves. When we don't, we can so easily delude ourselves, lose a sense of truth about ourselves, and our conscience loses power and purpose. Mostly, we tell ourselves what we would like to hear. We lose our way.

Jon Katz

A lot of me is very up, and you have to have light and shade. They are both important and you have to be able to balance them. You have to admit that sadness is part of you and that it enriches you. I use it in my work.

Imelda Staunton

How useless is painting, which attracts admiration by the resemblance of things, the originals of which we do not admire!

Blaise Pascal

Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy gets the Catholic Church. America gets Hollywood.

Erica Jong

My dad had this philosophy that if you tell children they're beautiful and wonderful then they believe it, and they will be. So I never thought I was unattractive. But I was never one of the girls at school who had lots of boyfriends.

Emily Mortimer

Culture is only true when implicitly critical, and the mind which forgets this revenges itself in the critics it breeds. Criticism is an indispensable element of culture.

Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno

We fail in the work of grace and love when there is too much of us and not enough of God.

Suzanne Woods Fisher

Time, which alone makes the reputation of men, ends by making their defects respectable.

Voltaire

The best of men is he who blushes when you praise him and remains silent when you defame him.

Kahlil Gibran

Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul.

Saint Augustine

If you modestly enjoy your fame you are not unworthy to rank with the holy.

Johann von Goethe