The next time a challenging situation presents itself, take a pause and make the conscious choice to meet it with curiosity or humor or the knowledge that this too shall pass.

Demand not that things happen as you wish, but wish them to happen as they do, and you will go on well.

Be free from grief not through insensibility like the irrational animals, nor through want of thought like the foolish, but like a man of virtue by having reason as the consolation of grief.

Poland is not East or West. Poland is at the center of European civilization. It has contributed mightily to that civilization. It is doing so today by being magnificently unreconciled to oppression.

My idea for 'BoneMan's Daughters' came from the loss of my own daughter when she left home to live with a monster at age 18. I wanted to throttle the man, but she was in love, so all I could do was hope, pray and cry.

Mondays are fine. It's your life that sucks.

It's still possible to be a cockeyed optimist these days — you just have to be a little more cockeyed.

Though you lose all hope, there is still hope, and it loves to surprise.

I am well in body though considerably rumpled up in spirit.

The other day Nan said, 'Nothing can ever be quite the same for any of us again.' It made me feel rebellious. Why shouldn't things be the same again - when everything is over and Jem and Jerry are back? We'll all be happy and jolly again and these days will seem just like a bad dream.

In this world you've just got to hope for the best and prepare for the worst and take whatever God sends.

Stop a bit and think it over. There do be some knots mighty aisy to tie but the untying is a cat of a different brade.