I guess we all like to be recognized not for one piece of fireworks but for the ledger of our daily work.

The first lesson I've learned is that no matter what you do in your life you have to figure out your own internal rhythms - I mean what works for you doesn't necessarily work for your friend.

Sometimes what works 40 years ago doesn't work today.

Ageism works in both directions. As a teenager in the public eye people would talk condescendingly to me. When you get older there's this feeling that you have to start carving up your face and body. Right now I'm in the middle ground - I think women in their thirties are taken seriously.

Sheer flattery got me into the theater. Flattery always works with me particularly the flattery of women.

All human wisdom works and has worries and grief as reward.

The current wisdom now is that if the three networks are covering the news the same way the difference is the anchor people. I think that won't be true in the future.

Focus on the mind and the soul. Read. Study. Enrol in a course of lectures. Pray. Become a member of a religious congregation. Study the Bible or other ancient works of wisdom.

No party has a monopoly on wisdom. No democracy works without compromise. But when Governor Romney and his allies in Congress tell us we can somehow lower our deficit by spending trillions more on new tax breaks for the wealthy - well you do the math. I refuse to go along with that. And as long as I'm President I never will.

I had a 2-week courtship with a fellow student in the fiction workshop in Iowa and a 5-minute wedding in a lawyer's office above the coffee shop where we'd been having lunch that day. And so I sent a cable to my father saying 'By the time you get this Daddy I'll already be Mrs. Blaise!'