If you feel so strongly about what's on television, don't have one.

The lie, of course, is more interesting.

When people say that German or any other language is romantic... all they really mean is that they've enjoyed a past in the language

To each other, we were as normal and nice as the smell of bread. We were just a family. In a family even exaggerations make perfect sense.

The first of my father's illusions was that bears could survive the life led by human beings; the second was that human beings could survive a life in hotels.

It´s natural to want someone you love to do what you want, or what you think would be good for them, but you have to let everything happen to them. You can't interfere with people you love any more than you're supposed to interfere with people you don't even know. And that's hard, ..., because you often feel like interfering -you want to be the one who makes the plans.

Ever since the Christmas of 1953, I have felt that the yuletide is a special hell for those families who have suffered any loss or who must admit to any imperfection; the so-called spirit of giving can be as greedy as receiving-Christmas is our time to be aware of what we lack, of who's not home.