Wise People I Have Known (from teevee)

I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing. -Agatha Christie


The only thing that means something is…we make friends, and we mean something to each other. --Liv Ullmann, actor. Sao Paolo, Brazil, October 9, 2008

Ordinary life does not interest me. I seek only the high moments. I am in accord with the surrealists, searching for the marvelous. I want to be a writer who reminds others that these moments exist; I want to prove that there is infinite space, infinite meaning, infinite dimension." -Anais Nin, as written in her diary, 1931

· The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.
— A.N.

There came a time when the risk it took to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to bloom. –A.N.

"Love is the title of all my work."—A.N.

"MIDNIGHT. AFTER AN OPERA. ALL EVENING, WHILE I HEARD THE MUSIC, I had dreams about myself, dreams of beauty, of intellectual achievements, of grace, expression in dancing, of passionate, desperate living. I felt myself burning
with delerious fever; I saw myself at home, at teas, on the stage, in various countries, writing, dancing, moving, changing, changing. I was everywhere, I was everything, everybody. MY LIFE HAD NO LIMITS, NO BOUNDARIES, NO END. The more I dreamed, the deeper grew my fever, until I suddenly realized I was dazzling myself with myself." --A.N., from her diary

“We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of the dreams.” –Roald Dahl, from screenplay to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

“After all, it is those who have a deep and real inner life who are best able to deal with the irritating details of outer life.” --Evelyn Underhill

“Though I’ve grown old, the bell still rings for me, as it does for all those who truly believe.” --Chris Van Allsburg, from The Polar Express

"One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words." –Goethe

“It is not enough for you to love a movie. You must love it for the right reasons.”—Pierre Rissent, French cineaste

“Young people, heed this advice: Never marry someone who doesn't love the movies you love. Sooner or later, that person will not love you.” –Roger Ebert

“…I’ve never understood men going out in groups, the pack mentality. I’ve never been that guy, never been part of a sports team, never been at that table full of pals ordering steaks. Never have. I’ve just always wanted to find a woman I can talk to. Talk to all the time.” --Dustin Hoffman

“Life with all its sorrows is good . . . everything is meaningful even if in a sense beyond our understanding . . . there is always tomorrow.” –Dorothy Thompson

"My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee the more I have, for both are infinite." –Shakespeare

“There's just something about that one guy standing up there with a bat and the other guy standing out there with the ball. That, to me, that one- on-one engagement, is so American." --Glenda Jackson, MP, on baseball, September 2003

“Love’s the only engine of survival.” –Leonard Cohen, The Future

“Man is born crying. When he has cried enough, he dies.” –Akira Kurosawa, Ran

"I don't think about what I've done. I'm more concerned with what I do. Of course, I know that what I am doing, I do it because of what I did. But it is behind me." –Isabelle Huppert

"Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar."—Edward R. Murrow

“Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest danger to Earth” –Albert Einstein

“All people know the same truth. Our lives consist of how we chose to distort it.” –Woody Allen

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."—Mark Twain

"I like to feel like I have trancended my destiny." –A.N.

“The wake doesn’t drive the ship, any more than the tail wags the dog.” –Alan Watts