the proper place to eat lobster. . . is in a lobster shack as close to the sea as possible. There is no menu card because there is nothing else to eat except boiled lobster with melted butter.
My body of work means nothing to me
It's a living, breathing thing, acting
Physical qualities don't really matter much
If you're lucky as you get older, you respect the craft and it becomes a skill
I always choose to do the thing that scares me.
I'm a firm believer in absolute honesty.
You are ten times more likely to get hit by a car when the driver is aiming for you.
This is a glorious biography. . . The time is ripe for a new biography of Edith Wharton of this intimacy and on this scale. . . Lee the biographer pursues her subject down every winding corridor, into every hidden passage and dark corner. . . Her critical exploration of Edith Whartons work is dazzlingly assured. . . A feat of exhaustive research, and finely tuned to Whartons creative achievement at the same time. . . [Wharton] could scarcely have failed to be impressed by. . . its artistic sympathy, its sonorous depths, and its soaring conception.
In this primitive and abject state [of hunters and gatherers], which ill deserves the name of society, the human brute, without arts or laws, almost without sense or language, is poorly distinguished from the rest of the animal creation.
Doubt grows with knowledge.