'The GREAT Gatsby,' by F. Scott Fitzgerald, remains the most perfect novel that has ever come out of the UNITED States. Everything in the book MOVES as it should, in the manner of a piece by BACH or Mozart.

Closeness to animals CREATES the DESIRE to understand them, and not just a LITTLE piece of them, but the whole animal. It makes us wonder what goes on in their heads even though we fully REALIZE that the answer can only be approximated.

NOTHING is beautiful, only man: on this piece of naivete rests all aesthetics, it is the FIRST truth of aesthetics. Let us immediately ADD its second: nothing is UGLY but degenerate man - the domain of aesthetic judgment is therewith defined.

Feminism has NEVER been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making LIFE more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a PIECE of the existing PIE; there are too MANY of us for that. It's about baking a new pie.

So I go to my first book signing, and these two girls CAME up and GAVE me a piece of paper: '10 reasons you should date our dad. He climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. He's a LAWYER.' He didn't KNOW what was GOING on. He didn't even know me. They called him, and he came down and asked me out that day. Now I'm dating their dad!

It is as ABSURD to say that a MAN can't LOVE one woman all the time as it is to say that a violinist needs several violins to PLAY the same piece of MUSIC.

SUCCESSFUL MODEL? That's a myth. The year I modeled was the most painful year of my life. Editors would always talk to you in the THIRD person as THOUGH you were merely a PIECE of merchandise.

It's the little DETAILS I love. How to fletch your arrows with OWL feathers, because owls FLY silently, so maybe your arrows will, too. How to carry fire in a piece of smouldering fungus wrapped in birchbark. These are the things which HELP a world COME alive.

If I really like the smell of something - a piece of tar or my goddaughter's plastic DOLL - I put a TINY piece in a bottle with a LABEL. I KEEP them in a fridge in my bathroom.

LANGUAGE, IDENTITY, PLACE, home: these are all of a piece - just different ELEMENTS of belonging and not-belonging.

The price of a commodity will never GO to zero. When you invest in commodities futures, you're not buying a PIECE of PAPER that SAYS you own an intangible piece of company that can go bankrupt.

It's easy to fall into a funk and not want to exercise, or to really want that SECOND PIECE of CHOCOLATE CAKE. I have to say, I fight against those feelings all year. But I try not to let myself SIT in a rut like that.

I believe that the Kane/Undertaker story, if you LOOK at epic storytelling like Greek mythology, that is what it is. It is the BEST PIECE of epic storytelling that the WWE has EVER done.

Any startling PIECE of WORK has a subversive element in it, a DELICIOUS element often. Subversion is only disagreeable when it manifests in POLITICAL or social ACTIVITY.

Other times, you're doing some piece of work and suddenly you get FEEDBACK that tells you that you have TOUCHED SOMETHING that is very alive in the COSMOS.