It's tempting to wish for the perfect boss, the perfect parent, or the perfect outfit. But maybe the best any of us can do is not to quit, play the hand we've been dealt, and accessorize what we've got.

We cannot slay our incapacity and rise above it, but that is precisely what we wanted. Incapacity exists. No one should deny it, find fault with it or shout it down.

A life spent in making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing.

You should read history and look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know.

I'd realized that in writing happiness is useless-without suffering there is no story.

Although stunned and hungry, many sang, because it would have been pointless to aggravate misfortune by complaining.

She owed no one an explanation; if she had made mistakes she had been duly punished by giving up her family, suffering in the hold of the ship, losing her baby, and facing a future of total uncertainty.

Happiness is slippery, it slithers away between your fingers, but problems are something you can hold on to, they've got handles, they're rough and hard.

He had always been thin, but there he was reduced to nothing but skin and bones. His skin was burned by the unrelenting sun, salt, and sand, his features sharpened: he was a Giacometti sculpture in cast iron.

This is a road I must travel bleeding.

We were working under very harsh conditions on 'Zero Kelvin.' We were up there in the Arctic, closer to the North Pole than to a hospital. Sometimes you had to sleep in small Arctic tents with guns to protect yourself from polar bears and stuff.

We want to take ourselves out of our comfort zones; when you're in your comfort zone for so long, you only play to a certain level.