Religions do a useful thing: they narrow God to the limits of man. Philosophy replies by doing a necessary thing: it elevates man to the plane of God.

Without vanity, without coquetry, without curiosity, in a word, without the fall, woman would not be woman. Much of her grace is in her frailty.

Curiosity is one of the forms of feminine bravery.

Thought is more than a right - it is the very breath of man. Whoever fetters thought attacks man himself. To speak, to write, to publish, are things, so far as the right is concerned, absolutely identical. They are the ever-enlarging circles of intelligence in action; they are the sonorous waves of thought.

Love always, in one way or another, means pain as well as joy.

I just feel like people like a little break. Especially at 12:37 at night, you go, like, 'I'm just tired of the snarky right now. I just want to lie down and have somebody make me laugh for an hour. Entertain me, and then I'm going to sleep with a smile on my face.' That's my job; that's what I do.

To me, the joy you're going to get in a 'Punisher' story is watching him punish incredibly wicked people. Now, if you can add to that an emotional content, wonderful.

One of the reasons that I take such joy in being a trustee of the New York Public Library is the love of reading that I found as a child in the Saturday morning library events for preschoolers and first and second graders as I was growing up in Augusta, GA.