Charles Maurice de Talleyrand

Too much sensibility creates unhappiness and too much insensibility creates crime.

Mistrust first impulses; they are nearly always good.

Since the masses are always eager to believe something, for their benefit nothing is so easy to arrange as facts.

It's very hard to play the straight lead girl and still make her sparkly and fun and real.

I'm not afraid of wanting money at all. Money will give me more power to do things that are truer to my spirit than what I'm already doing.

In reality, Afghanistan has functioned as a nation-state for more than two centuries, and its army and bureaucracy reach back to the 19th century.