In the New Yorker library, I have long been shelved between Nadine Gordimer and Brendan Gill; an eerie little space nestled between high seriousness of purpose and legendary lightness of touch.

There are very few movies in English about romantic obsession told with a seriousness of purpose.

I'm always surprised when people respond positively to what I am saying, given its seriousnessness and strange nature.

In an ideal world, the amount of money we spend on medical research to prevent or cure a disease would be proportional to its seriousness and the number of people who suffer from it.

As the Palestinian leadership never seems to pay any penalty for its words, America's seriousness about the peace process is in doubt.

Humor and seriousness are not in opposition to each other.

If you can get humor and seriousness at the same time, you've created a special little thing, and that's what I'm looking for, because if you get pompous, you lose everything.

Run a home like you would a small business and treat it with the same seriousness.

Living is no laughing matter: you must live with great seriousness like a squirrel for example - I mean without looking for something beyond and above living, I mean living must be your whole occupation.

OK, in all seriousness, I would say I couldn't be in a relationship without equality, generosity, integrity, spirit, kindness and humor. And awesomeness.

Men are convinced of your arguments, your sincerity, and the seriousness of your efforts only by your death.

Drop all your seriousness. Love and laugh whole heartedly so life becomes joyful again

The Nobel Prize is the best thing that can happen to a writer in terms of how it affects your contracts, the publishers, and the seriousness with which your work is taken. On the other hand, it does interfere with your private life, or it can if you let it, and it has zero effect on the writing.It doesn't help you write better and if you let it, it will intimidate you about future projects.

It isn't the subjects we write about but the seriousness and subtlety of our expression that determines the worth of or effort.

If a serious statement is defined as one that may be made in terms of waking life, poetry will never rise to the level of seriousness. It lies beyond seriousness, on that more primitive and original level where the child, the animal, the savage, and the seer belong, in the region of dream, enchantment, ecstasy, laughter. To understand poetry we must be capable of donning the child's soul like a magic cloak and of forsaking man's wisdom for the child's.

If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing. A writer who appreciates the seriousness of writing so little that he is anxious to make people see he is formally educated, cultured or well-bred is merely a popinjay. And this too remember; a serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.

Authentic faith leads us to treat others with unconditional seriousness and to a loving reverence for the mystery of the human personality. Authentic Christianity should lead to maturity, personality, and reality. It should fashion whole men and women living lives of love and communion. False, manhandled religion produces the opposite effect. Whenever religion shows contempt or disregards the rights of persons, even under the noblest pretexts, it draws us away from reality and God.

In weariness, existence is like the reminder of a commitment to exist, with all the seriousness and harshness of an irrevocable contract. One has to do something, one has to aspire after and undertake [...] In weariness we want to escape existence itself, and not only one of its landscapes in a longing for more beautiful skies. An evasion without an itinerary and without an end, it is not trying to come ashore somewhere.

The maturity of man-that means, to have reacquired the seriousness that one had as a child at play

Humor can get in under the door while seriousness is still fumbling at the handle.

In my view there is nothing more vicious and outrageous than the abuse exploitation and harm of the most vulnerable members of our society and I firmly believe that our nation's laws and resources need to reflect the seriousness of these terrible crimes.

If you can get humor and seriousness at the same time you've created a special little thing and that's what I'm looking for because if you get pompous you lose everything.

I think almost every writer in the world would hope that books would be always talked about with respect and civility and depth and seriousness.

OK in all seriousness I would say I couldn't be in a relationship without equality generosity integrity spirit kindness and humor. And awesomeness.