When it came to religion, I felt I belonged to no one. It saddened me, it angered me, it confused me, and it made me religiously ambivalent. So I chose my calling: Cubs baseball.

If you belonged to a political party or a social club that was tied to as much bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, violence, and sheer ignorance as religion is, you'd resign in protest.

We all obviously need others to look up to, and be inspirational to us. Ford did a great job as far as putting the presidency back where it belonged, getting the trust back after Nixon. And President Reagan has been one of the most influential presidents.

In my day, the only people who achieved real independence were my father, Mary Pickford and Charles Chaplin, who, with D. W. Griffith, formed United Artists. Other than that, everybody belonged to the big studios. They had no say in their own careers.

There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels for someone, for someone, pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echos.

The prolonged slavery of women is the darkest page in human history.

I had five brothers and sisters. Four of them older, and some of them played instruments, and we would get together and have family recitals and raise money for the church. I belonged to a wonderful church community that encouraged me to sing.

I am happy with my family and my colleagues and want to continue making my own kind of cinema. I have never belonged to any camp and have no friends in the industry. Most of them will pay lip service, but when it comes to doing, they tend to shy away.

I sang in the choir for years, even though my family belonged to another church.

True intuitive expertise is learned from prolonged experience with good feedback on mistakes.

When I look back over my life it's almost as if there was a plan laid out for me - from the little girl who was so passionate about animals who longed to go to Africa and whose family couldn't afford to put her through college. Everyone laughed at my dreams. I was supposed to be a secretary in Bournemouth.

One thing I longed to do was to design a complete look, from head to toe, so I started a make-up line in 1966.

You take fantasies, which for thousands of years belonged to the religious realm - overcoming death or our merging with the universe - and you suddenly start talking about them in a more technical perspective as something that can be achieved, not after you die with the help of supernatural beings, but in this very life with the help of technology.

People could rationally decide that prolonged relationships take up too much time and effort and that they'd much rather do other kinds of things. But most people are afraid of rejection.

It was actually a women's writing group I belonged to in graduate school that gave me the courage to move from poetry to fiction.

I worked at a local country club that I never belonged to. I did random tasks in the pro shop and supposed to be in charge of the register, but that didn't go so well. They quickly realized I was better with people, not computers.

I belonged to a conservative Punjabi family and I didn't want to get too close to a rich boy who drove fast cars.

I always knew I was brainy. It struck me when I was a child that I wanted to be an adult because I never felt I belonged among children whose minds were so much simpler than mine.

I was a fortnight away from my 16th birthday when the fabled 2005 Ashes series ended. My hero-worship throughout it belonged to Ian Bell - though I don't think I've ever made that abundantly clear to him.

My second freshman year of college, that's year two of seven, my father got very sick and though he was going to die. He gave me a Rolex, a bottom of the line one. I wore that watch everyday. He didn't die. On my 40th birthday, he gave me a very nice Rolex that belonged to him. That's the one thing we connect on: the watch.

I threw my 20th birthday party at Brown, and I didn't even have to say to anyone not to put pictures on Facebook. Not a single picture went up. That was when I knew I'd found a solid group of friends, and I felt like I belonged.

You're lingering around me like a ghost. Wanting to climb into the body that once belonged to you. But there's no home for you here. My heart stopped beating for your spirit long ago.

To stomach the world for any prolonged length of time, one must either remain a child or become more than a man

Know that I loved you and that I belonged to you. And I wouldn't have had it any other way.