I force people to have coffee with me, just because I don't trust that a friendship can be maintained without any other senses besides a computer or cellphone screen.

I always liked it when people go back in time to discover things about themselves, like with 'A Christmas Carol' and you're getting a tour of your life by the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future.

I kept saying that I'd never live in L.A., and I didn't think I would. But that's where the work is, and I ended up making a lot of friends there, and my old friends moved out to Los Angeles too. And also, I think when you're famous, its hard to live in a small town.

I remember once acting really cool on a bus with this girl named Stephanie. When I got home, I realized that I had a really big zit on my forehead. If you have acne problems, you really shouldn't be acting like Don Juan. I should have been contrite - and apologized for exposing her to the angry pimple.

Acting can be pretty challenging. I can't say making a romantic comedy is challenging, but to do anything well, you have to put yourself into it.

But no, I don't really like romantic comedies, so I don't really care. I never go see 'em.

I feel close to Lloyd in 'Say Anything'. He was like a super-interesting version of me. Only I'm not as good as him. Whatever part of me is romantic and optimistic, I reached into that to play Lloyd.

I think that taking night trains or meeting someone on the road is pretty romantic. I've done a couple of things like that. I've surprised someone in Paris. And hopefully, when you surprise someone, they're happy to see you.

When applied to politics and taken to its extreme, kitsch is the mask of death. Fascism was all aesthetics. There was no core principle to it. There was no truth to it.

Death is a billion-dollar business. They can't even pass a law where it takes seven days to get a gun. Why don't you have to go through the same kind of screening you do to get a driver's license? It's totally insane.

Poe had this curious kind of alchemical courage, where he took all the terrible things and terrors that happened in his life, all this shame and fear and pain, and turned them into great works of art. He was a complex, brilliant person who was just wired too tight.

A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself. He makes his failure certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.

How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it.

Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it.

All human wisdom is summed up in two words; wait and hope.

A lot of women, when they're young, feel they have very good friends, and find later on that friendship is complicated. It's easy to be friends when everyone's 18.

I have an ambition to write a great book, but that's really a competition with myself. I've noticed that a lot of young writers, people in all media, want to be famous but they don't really want to do anything. I can't think of anything less worth striving for than fame.

In my situation, every time I write a sentence, I'm thinking not only of the people I ended up in college with but my siblings, my family, my school friends, the people from my neighborhood. I've come to realize that this is an advantage, really: it keeps you on your toes.

You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality.

My feeling is, having lived in different classes, that people want equality of opportunity... that's the thing that makes me despair: the idea that people aren't given equality of opportunity.

A lot of people seem to feel that joy is only the most intense version of pleasure, arrived at by the same road - you simply have to go a little further down the track. That has not been my experience.

Well-run libraries are filled with people because what a good library offers cannot be easily found elsewhere: an indoor public space in which you do not have to buy anything in order to stay.

I think of reading like a balanced diet; if your sentences are too baggy, too baroque, cut back on fatty Foster Wallace, say, and pick up Kafka as roughage.

The thing that's really cool for me about Miami Beach is you have this dichotomy between sunlight and family and happiness and innocence and then at night, darker, stranger mob conspiracy stuff sort of comes out. It seems like a storytelling engine. You can just keep writing about how those two worlds smash into each other.

I just make it my business to get along with people so I can have fun. It's that simple.

It's your outlook on life that counts. If you take yourself lightly and don't take yourself too seriously, pretty soon you can find the humor in our everyday lives. And sometimes it can be a lifesaver.

I'm a big cockeyed optimist. I try to accentuate the positive as opposed to the negative.

If you get into a Broadway show and it doesn't work, you're a failure. And if it does work, you may be stuck for who knows how long. It just doesn't sound great to me!

It's a little known fact that one in three family pets gets lost during its lifetime, and approximately 9 million pets enter shelters each year. That's why it's a wonderful thing to get your pet microchipped and registered with your contact information because then they can be located and the owners can track where their pets are.

I'm not what you might call sexy, but I'm romantic. Let's put it that way.

I think it's your mental attitude. So many of us start dreading age in high school and that's a waste of a lovely life. 'Oh... I'm 30, oh, I'm 40, oh, 50.' Make the most of it.

The bottom line is, I'm blessed with good health. On top of that, I don't go around thinking 'Oh, I'm 90, I better do this or I better do that.' I'm just Betty. I'm the same Betty that I've always been. Take it or leave it.

I'm not into animal rights. I'm only into animal welfare and health. I've been with the Morris Animal Foundation since the '70s. We're a health organization. We fund campaign health studies for dogs, cats, lizards and wildlife. I've worked with the L.A. Zoo for about the same length of time. I get my animal fixes!

Wendy Malick and Valerie Bertinelli make fun of me, but I take care of my health - I don't abuse it.

I kid around a lot, but pranks are not my best strength!

Anger tears me up inside... My own... or anyone else's.

Well, I mean, if a joke or humor is bawdy, it's got to be funny enough to warrant it. You can't just have it bawdy or dirty just for the sake of being that - it's got to be funny.

My mother and dad were big animal lovers, too. I just don't know how I would have lived without animals around me. I'm fascinated by them - both domestic pets and the wild community. They just are the most interesting things in the world to me, and it's made such a difference in my lifetime.

I like bawdy humor. I love bawdy humor, but not dirty humor.

During the Depression, my dad made radios to sell to make extra money. Nobody had any money to buy the radios, so he would trade them for dogs. He built kennels in the backyard, and he cared for the dogs.

Spend a lot of time talking to customers face to face. You'd be amazed how many companies don't listen to their customers.

Most people give up just when they're about to achieve success. They quit on the one yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game one foot from a winning touchdown.

Most new jobs won't come from our biggest employers. They will come from our smallest. We've got to do everything we can to make entrepreneurial dreams a reality.

Business is not just doing deals; business is having great products, doing great engineering, and providing tremendous service to customers. Finally, business is a cobweb of human relationships.

Eagles don't flock, you have to find them one at a time.

War has rules, mud wrestling has rules - politics has no rules.

The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty. The activist is the man who cleans up the river.

I have found adventure in flying, in world travel, in business, and even close at hand... Adventure is a state of mind - and spirit.

Friendship is a difficult, dangerous job. It is also (though we rarely admit it) extremely exhausting.

What an uncertain thing, marriage - what an elusive thing, happiness!