If we desire a society of peace, then we cannot achieve such a society through violence. If we desire a society without discrimination, then we must not discriminate against anyone in the process of building this society. If we desire a society that is democratic, then democracy must become a means as well as an end.

Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.

Good novel is a conjunction of many factors, the main of which is, without a doubt, hard work. There are many things behind a good novel, but in particular, there is a lot of work - a lot of patience, a lot of stubbornness, and a critical spirit.

You can write ten versions of a scene, and then, on the day, discover that something in the original scene worked. It's hard on writers. Hard on actors, hard on editors, hard on me, hard on the producers, who require patience and confidence. But I can't get to the end without going through this process.

Luck is a component that a lot of people in the arts sometimes fail to recognise: that you can have talent, perseverance, patience, but without luck you will not have a successful career.

There is no road too long to the man who advances deliberately and without undue haste; there are no honors too distant to the man who prepares himself for them with patience.

Parenting is something that I got early, because when you grow up without a father being there, and you see a single mother struggle to feed the kids, you do not want to put your own blood through that.

I do not wish to share any parenting responsibilities with Michael because he is doing so well without me.

So much of my work is about children and/or parenting; it's something I'm drawn to without being able to completely articulate why.

I can only speak for my husband and myself, but we don't feel like we could do any of this parenting without our faith.

Asian American success is often presented as something of a horror - robotic, unfeeling machines psychotically hellbent on excelling, products of abusive tiger parenting who care only about test scores and perfection, driven to succeed without even knowing why.

Some men don't want to be responsible fathers. It's easier to say 'Let's just turn the kids over to the state.' Women end up bearing the entire load, raising kids alone without a husband to share the parenting.

I doubt if you can have a truly wild party without liquor.

All, all is theft, all is unceasing and rigorous competition in nature; the desire to make off with the substance of others is the foremost - the most legitimate - passion nature has bred into us and, without doubt, the most agreeable one.

Absolute space, in its own nature, without regard to anything external, remains always similar and immovable. Relative space is some movable dimension or measure of the absolute spaces, which our senses determine by its position to bodies, and which is vulgarly taken for immovable space.

The nature of the human mind is such that unless it is stimulated by images of things acting upon it from without, all remembrance of them passes easily away.

The generous abundance of her passion, without guile or trickery, was like a white flame which penetrated and found response in depths of his own sensuous nature that had never yet been reached.

To know what that true self is without social pressure is to know your true nature.

One cannot violate the promptings of one's nature without having that nature recoil upon itself.

Nature doesn't need people - people need nature; nature would survive the extinction of the human being and go on just fine, but human culture, human beings, cannot survive without nature.

I am following Nature without being able to grasp her, I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.

People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.

What's a butterfly garden without butterflies?

There's no night without stars.