Kids are a great analogy. You want your kids to grow up and you don't want your kids to grow up. You want your kids to become independent of you but it's also a parent's worst nightmare: That they won't need you. It's like the real tragedy of parenting.

Plot rules nor even poetry are not half so great beauties in tragedy or comedy as a just imitation of nature of character of the passions and their operations in diversified situations.

In some ways my gift for music and writing was born out of tragedy really and loss.

I did know Ted Hughes and I partly wrote the book to explain to myself and others the complexities of a marriage that was for six years wonderfully productive of poetry and then ended in tragedy.

The mark of a good marriage is partnership and continuing to feel inspired by your spouse. I had that with Tao. But the end is not necessarily the tragedy. Staying in a relationship that is no longer working is the tragedy. Living unhappily - that's the tragedy.

I love John Irving's stuff. It's that marriage of comedy and tragedy. It's really terrific.

While we have the gift of life it seems to me the only tragedy is to allow part of us to die - whether it is our spirit our creativity or our glorious uniqueness.

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.

Life's Tragedy is that we get old to soon and wise too late.

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.

Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up but a comedy in long-shot.

Life is a dream for the wise a game for the fool a comedy for the rich a tragedy for the poor.

Well I think the great tragedy in American politics is what is legal not what is illegal.

I'm sure there are people who survive tragedy without humor but I've never met any of them. Nor would I be particularly interested in writing about them if I did meet them.

I don't think it's possible to have a sense of tragedy without having a sense of humor.

There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain comedy and tragedy humor and hurt.

Humor is merely tragedy standing on its head with its pants torn.