Catherine the Great

Very early it was noticed that I had a good memory; therefore I was insistently tormented with learning everything by heart.

I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.

The more a man knows, the more he forgives.

Happiness and unhappiness are in the heart and spirit of each one of us: If you feel unhappy, then place yourself above that and act so that your happiness does not get to be dependent on anything.

A great wind is blowing, and that gives you either imagination or a headache.

Don’t worry about things you cannot alter.

I have a private life in which I do not permit interference. It must be respected.

Very jaded and tired and depressed and cross…Must fill my mind with air and light, and walk and blanket it in fog.

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

He who is not busy being born is busy dying.

My philosophy is to have a really good time and never to let anything stop me from doing what I want to do.

It is just good practice to do a situational scan and have situational awareness when you are out in the world.

There are four things every person has more of than they know; sins, debt, years, and foes.

It is bad luck to be superstitious.

I can’t understand why a person will take a year to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.

The think I remember most about Brooklyn was how much I wanted to get out of Brooklyn.

Freedom of speech does not protect you from the consequences of saying stupid shit

I was born an American; I will live an American; I shall die an American.

The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.

You are the fever that never broke, the name stuck in my throat. You are every letter of every word in every poem I ever wrote.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.