One of the traps of adolescence is the sort of paranoid resentment that somehow you're never going to match up and that everybody else's life is going to be better and finer and fuller. That everyone else attended some secret lesson in which how to live was taught and you had a dental appointment that day, or you were somehow not invited. And the point of great writers like Wilde is that they make that invitation to you.

Families where there is not much laughter I think are signs of some sort of dysfunctionality or sickness.

Taste every fruit of every tree in the garden at least once. It is an insult to creation not to experience it fully. Temperance is wickedness.

My first words, as I was being born [...] I looked up at my mother and said, 'that's the last time I'm going up one of those.

All we have to do is listen. The Good Lord gave us two ears and only one mouth, my dear white-headed mother used to say.

A film star is a kind of public monument, and everyone's staring at them, and they've kind of got railings around them, and they're rather miserable most of the time.

Having a great intellect is no path to being happy.