Born on April 24th

"Very often a change of self is needed more than a change of scene."

"People seldom refuse help, if one offers it in the right way."

"As I make my slow pilgrimage through the world, a certain sense of beautiful mystery seems to gather and grow."

"One's mind has a way of making itself up in the background, and it suddenly becomes clear what one means to do."

"I read the newspaper avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction."

"The worst sorrows in life are not in its losses and misfortunes, but its fears."

"All the best stories are but one story in reality - the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape."

"Knowing what you can not do is more important than knowing what you can do. In fact, that's good taste."

"When you get to my age life seems little more than one long march to and from the lavatory."

"Ambition often puts Men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same position with creeping."

"Man, an animal that makes bargains."

"A well begun is half ended."

"I am sure it is one's duty as a teacher to try to show boys that no opinions, no tastes, no emotions are worth much unless they are one's own. I suffered acutely as a boy from the lack of being shown this."

"I've been called many names like perfectionist, difficult and obsessive. I think it takes obsession, takes searching for the details for any artist to be good."

"Doubt can motivate you, so don't be afraid of it. Confidence and doubt are at two ends of the scale, and you need both. They balance each other out."

"You have got to discover you, what you do, and trust it."

"I am simple, complex, generous, selfish, unattractive, beautiful, lazy, and driven."

"I remember when I was 5 living on Pulaski Street in Brooklyn, the hallway of our building had a brass banister and a great sound, a great echo system. I used to sing in the hallway."

"Success to me is having ten honeydew melons and eating only the top half of each slice."

"When I was maybe 5 or 6 years old, the neighborhood girls would sit on the stoop and sing. I was known as the kid who had a good voice and no father."

"Why does a woman work ten years to change a man's habits and then complain that he's not the man she married?"

"I love things that are indescribable, like the taste of an avocado or the smell of a gardenia."

"There is nothing more important in life than love."

"My biggest nightmare is I'm driving home and get sick and go to hospital. I say: 'Please help me.' And the people say: 'Hey, you look like...' And I'm dying while they're wondering whether I'm Barbra Streisand."

"Marlon Brando. The finest actor who ever lived. He was my idol when I was 13. He's done enough work to last two lifetimes. Everything I do, I think: Can Brando play this with me?"

"Men are allowed to have passion and commitment for their work... a woman is allowed that feeling for a man, but not her work."

"Just like my father, I've always loved education. In school I was a member of the honor society."

"I'm interested in the truth, and unauthorized biographies are not. Yes, I would like to correct those errors someday."

"I like simple things. Elastic waists, so I can eat."

"I find George Bush and Dick Cheney frightening, Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft frightening."