“Finally, you have to be able to get over a crush if it doesn't work out. A crush is like a love disease. It can drive you mad. Try not to let it get you down.”

“If it doesn't work out, just let it go. Whatever happens, don't let it make you crazy.”

“You can fall in love at first sight with a place as with a person.”

“[American family court] is a system that is corrupt on his best day. It is like being tied to the back of a pickup truck and dragged down a gravel late at night. No one can hear your cries and complaints and it is not over until they say it's over.”

“A refurbished Star Wars is on somewhere or everywhere. I have no intention of revisiting any galaxy. I shrivel inside each time it is mentioned. Twenty years ago, when the film was first shown, it had a freshness, also a sense of moral good and fun. Then I began to be uneasy at the influence it might be having. The first bad penny dropped in San Francisco when a sweet-faced boy of twelve told me proudly that he had seen Star Wars over a hundred times. His elegant mother nodded with approval. Looking into the boy's eyes I thought I detected little star-shells of madness beginning to form and I guessed that one day they would explode.'I would love you to do something for me,' I said.'Anything! Anything!' the boy said rapturously.'You won't like what I'm going to ask you to do,' I said.'Anything, sir, anything!''Well,' I said, 'do you think you could promise never to see Star Wars again?'He burst into tears. His mother drew herself up to an immense height. 'What a dreadful thing to say to a child!' she barked, and dragged the poor kid away. Maybe she was right but I just hope the lad, now in his thirties, is not living in a fantasy world of secondhand, childish banalities.”

“When you’re young, no matter how many unpleasant things have happened to you (unless by that time you’ve become hopelessly neurotic), hope returns daily, even hourly. The sight of a beautiful person, bird, tree, house, flower can lift your spirits like a thermal does the wings of a gliding gull!”

“You won’t fall madly out-of-your-brains in love? Let your world as you know it be blown to bits because you fall heart-crushingly head-over-heels for someone?”