To desire and expect nothing for oneself and to have profound sympathy for others is genuine holiness.

The joy of the mind is the measure of its strength.

Love never dies of starvation, but often of indigestion.

A sensible woman should be guided by her head when taking a husband, and by her heart when taking a lover.

Genius is rarely able to give any account of its own processes.

Philosophy and Art both render the invisible visible by imagination.

Insight is the first condition of Art.

Personal experience is the basis of all real Literature.

Science is the systematic classification of experience.

Insincerity is always weakness; sincerity even in error is strength.

Originality is independence, not rebellion; it is sincerity, not antagonism.

Books minister to our knowledge, to our guidance, and to our delight, by their truth, their uprightness, and their art.

Sincerity is moral truth.

The only cure for grief is action.

Imagination is not the exclusive appanage of artists, but belongs in varying degrees to all men.

You can't be taught to be brainy. You've either got it or you don't.

I kept thinking I was always going to meet the right man, but I never did. Kept waiting for this knight in shining armour. 'When's he coming? He's taking a long time, isn't he?'

I was super brainy and a proper geek at school, but there would always be a boy. But that sort of obsession did turn me into a songwriter. My writing has always come from that feeling of infatuation.

Christmas in L.A. is weird. There's no snow. It's not even cold.

I suffer panic attacks which has made me really conscious about my fitness and I have become addicted to jogging. It might sound odd but a lot of good has come out of it. My fans send letters saying they have taken up jogging because I do it.

I met Prince William at a musical festival and he let me know he was a fan of my music. But the invitation to sing at his wedding reception came completely out of the blue. The fact that Kate and William knew the words to my songs was very touching.

Even when I'm in quite a happy state of mind, I like writing really sad songs. I think a lot of people do.

'I Know You Care' is about my dad. And I haven't seen him for a long, long time. And my parents divorced when I was really young. And I guess I just wanted a - it was my way of saying that I wasn't bitter or angry anymore. I was just sad and just felt like something was missing.

The only day I remember of my parents' marriage was the day my dad walked out. As I stood there at five years old, with my older sister and younger brother, I knew that he was gone.

I'm obsessed with the countryside: woods, forests, fields, lakes, mountains. I'm really into folk music and folklore. But more so I'm into electronic music. I'm into bands that have both aspects, like Boards of Canada is a perfect example. You could listen to that type of music running through a woods. It's kind of what I wanted to achieve.

I instinctively dress a bit tougher because I've spent a lot of time in the U.S. and I realised there was a certain image projected of me here. I've always been an absolute rebel. When I was in my teen years I had piercings and wore all black.

It's usually a big kind of vent of frustration or anger or sadness that puts me in the right frame of mind to write. It's such a cliche to say that artists write when they're down, but it's true for me. It's a relief to get out what's eating away at my heart or my soul or my head.

Two things I'm obsessed with are the countryside and fields and being in the open space and body parts, so you'll hear me mentioning body parts and human anatomy. I've listened to my songs and I think I am quite visual and I talk about bones and flesh a lot.

I love prints of skulls and bones and have some taxidermy - a crow and a rabbit - to remind me of home. I like art and have a big portrait of Bjork.

Not much shocked me. You know, I worked in a home for Alzheimer's patients and my dad used to be really into murders and stuff, so I saw dead bodies. It desensitised me to a lot of things.

Starting probably with Janeane Garofalo and that era of stand-up ladies who were starting to be more brainy and strong and clever, guys started noticing those girls as sexy smart. I always called it smarxy.

I'm a big hit at parties. Friends ask me to sing B-I-N-G-O all the time. I'm thinking, you know, of maybe putting out a Christmas album or something.

I grew up with an extremely funny dad, and my mom is super funny.

Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow.

We are the children of a technological age. We have found streamlined ways of doing much of our routine work. Printing is no longer the only way of reproducing books. Reading them, however, has not changed.

Talent is a faculty that is highly developed, but genius commands all the faculties.

Sympathy with nature is part of a good person's religion.

Good art is art that allows you to enter it from a variety of angles and to emerge with a variety of views.

Like many women my age, I am 28 years old.

I couldn't have foreseen all the good things that have followed my mother's death. The renewed energy, the surprising sweetness of grief. The tenderness I feel for strangers on walkers. The deeper love I have for my siblings and friends. The desire to play the mandolin. The gift of a visitation.

Don't waste time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind.

Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you'll have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either of them might run out.

You can figure out who you were by which movies you loved when.

The movies we love and admire are to some extent a function of who we are when we see them.

You can map your life through your favorite movies, and no two people's maps will be the same.

I just want to have folks be comfortable and just share and have a good conversation. To me, that's kind of a lost art.

There are hundreds of millions of people on dating apps every day, but apparently, no such apps cater solely to sports fans.

I just love hanging out with good company on a great, fun golf course.

Good late-night humor can work at any time of the day.

Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers - and never succeeding.