I am not an adolescent, nor a romantic. I analyze objectively.

I hope the fathers and mothers of little girls will look at them and say 'yes, women can.'

The aspect of kind of living in your imagination and creating a more romantic vision of the world than the reality that you're given - that's definitely something I can sort of relate to.

I feel about romance the same way I do about a vocation: it's a calling. You have an inner intuition, an inner 'yes.' I don't know if it's destined or not, but certainly I couldn't imagine being the person I am today without the romantic experiences I've had.

After a life deprived of everything from romantic love to the choice of when to wake up in the morning, after 29 years without the ability to have a career or even to be alone at toilet, the Bijani sisters are not symbols but women who have had to live a shared life of constant, quotidian sacrifice.

All writers have their own pet commandments.

I spent three and a half years writing the novel 'Chang & Eng,' about the conjoined brothers for whom the term 'Siamese twins' was contrived, and when I think of these afflicted people, my only emotion is one of profound sympathy.

The prince in 'The Leopard' was a very complex character - at times autocratic, rude, strong - at times romantic, good, understanding - and sometimes even stupid, and above all, mysterious.

With female-oriented movies, unless it's something like 'Bridesmaids' or a romantic comedy, you've got to really worry about your opening weekend. And I'm always telling stories about women, not younger women, and it's just a much tougher audience to get to the movie theater.

I was a huge fan of the bandleader Ray Noble when I was younger. He was one of the biggest musical names of his day and wrote such romantic songs as 'Goodnight Sweetheart' and 'The Touch Of Your Lips.' Wonderful stuff.

The worst thing about age is not quite being able to do what you once did. The best thing is learning to accept what you've got and what you are.

Airports drive me mad. I don't mind the flying; it's all the hassle before you get on the plane and afterwards, including walking five miles through corridors to the point where you queue for ages to check passports and hope your luggage has arrived safely.

In Romanticism, the main determinant is the mood, the atmosphere. And in that regard, you could also describe Schubert as a Romantic.

For me, the perfect romantic suspense hero has got to be tough on the outside but tender at his core. A take-charge kind of guy who has his own inner strength and a strong sense of right and wrong - which might not dovetail with the conventional wisdom. I mean, he might bend the law if he thinks the ends justify the means.

I've always loved the '40s romantic comedies and the idea of those mistaken identities and lovers' misunderstandings.

Historically, the French have had a romantic attachment to their bikes. Though the first functioning two-wheeler is thought to have been invented by a German in 1817, it was the French who popularized and marketed the device in the 1860s, giving it the name 'bicycle.'

Too many women throw themselves into romance because they're afraid of being single, then start making compromises and losing their identity. I won't do that.

I'm not married, nor do I want to be. I'm the loving kind but not the marrying kind, though I am romantic.

Everyone thinks that Prince and I had a beautiful, romantic love affair, but we didn't. We just let people think that in order to promote 'Purple Rain.'

I'm now more about romantic beauty. The dominatrix thing is over. You never look as good in person as you do in 'Maxim,' but it's fun. It's all like a fantasy.

Happy is the man whom the Muses love: sweet speech flows from his mouth.

Whoever has trusted a woman has trusted deceivers.

Whoever, fleeing marriage and the sorrows that women cause, does not wish to wed comes to a deadly old age.

Bring a wife home to your house when you are of the right age, not far short of 30 years, nor much above; this is the right time for marriage.

Wealth should not be seized, but the god-given is much better.

Do not let a flattering woman coax and wheedle you and deceive you; she is after your barn.

I wanted to show people I'm like a modern Romeo. I'm romantic, but I can also be seductive. I can be cool and charismatic, swagger-type.

It's really sad for me that in the United States the Latino community is losing its culture and language, especially among kids born here - a lot of them can't even speak our language.

I don't know if I believe in marriage - I believe in love.

I definitely need a girl that has a good sense of humor because there are some girls that are just very uptight.

More generally, I made an effort to leave out things that weren't relevant to the main narrative themes of the book, namely that there were two sides to Steve Jobs: the romantic, poetic, countercultural rebel on one side, and the serious businessperson on the other.

When there are multiple versions of a story, you really have three ways to go. You can pick the most sensational version. You can try to balance things in your gut to get to what you think is the honest truth. Or you can err on the side of kindness.

I visited Jobs for the last time in his Palo Alto, Calif., home. He had moved to a downstairs bedroom because he was too weak to go up and down stairs. He was curled up in some pain, but his mind was still sharp and his humor vibrant.

I think I'm a romantic person, yeah.

It was an honor and privilege to arrive to this country 16 years ago with almost no money in my pocket. A lot has happened since then.

I used to be scared of women. When I was very young they terrified me, but discovering the female universe was incredible and still is to this day, as you never stop learning about them.

Listen, I think movies serve many different purposes, from those movies that are frivolous and just an entertainment, to movies that just go to exploring the complexities of the human soul. Everything is valid if it's done with honesty and dignity, and I actually do both of those types of movies in my career.

Cats are very independent animals. They're very sexy, if you want. Dogs are different. They're familiar. They're obedient. You call a cat, you go, 'Cat, come here.' He doesn't come to you unless you have something in your hand that he thinks might be food. They're very free animals, and I like that.

I love the diversity of America. I love the plain, normal sense of humor Americans have. It is not wicked, like in some countries. And I also love how new America is.

I always wanted to be a teacher. I went to school to be a teacher. And I've always, you know, had this sort of romantic idea about it. But I'm worried about - I'm worried about education.

What happened is, when I was doing 'Taxi,' the last year, we did this thing where we had on top hats and tails, and we pretended to tap-dance. And I said to myself, 'You know, I always wanted to know how to do this.' So I got myself a teacher, and I started studying, and I got hooked.

We don't tend to write about disease in fiction - not just teen novels but all American novels - because it doesn't fit in with our idea of the heroic romantic epic. There is room only for sacrifice, heroism, war, politics and family struggle.

It's hard to get movie studios to pay a lot of money for movies that don't have robots or explosions.

The life of Edward Estlin Cummings began with a childhood in Cambridge, Mass., that he described as happy, but he struggled in both his artistic and romantic exploits against the piousness of his father, an esteemed Harvard professor.

If an artist is driven primarily by social responsibility, I think the art probably suffers because, again, just as leadership has a rather defined end point or purpose, social responsibility would seem to have a very clear moral context.

The poem is not, as someone put it, deflective of entry. But the real question is, 'What happens to the reader once he or she gets inside the poem?' That's the real question for me, is getting the reader into the poem and then taking the reader somewhere, because I think of poetry as a kind of form of travel writing.

I'm a great believer in poetry out of the classroom, in public places, on subways, trains, on cocktail napkins. I'd rather have my poems on the subway than around the seminar table at an MFA program.

Poetry is my cheap means of transportation. By the end of the poem the reader should be in a different place from where he started. I would like him to be slightly disoriented at the end, like I drove him outside of town at night and dropped him off in a cornfield.

Poetry can do a lot of things to people. I mean it can improve your imagination. It can take you to new places. It can give you this incredible form of verbal pleasure.

Often people, when they're confronted with a poem, it's like someone who keep saying 'what is the meaning of this? What is the meaning of this?' And that dulls us to the other pleasures poetry offers.