Just about every children's book in my local bookstore has an animal for its hero. But then, only a few feet away in the cookbook section, just about every cookbook includes recipes for cooking animals. Is there a more illuminating illustration of our paradoxical relationship with the nonhuman world?

Jonathan Safran Foer

The only process that comes close to the process of writing a whole book, in my experience, is childbirth. There is this moment when you think you can't possibly labour for another moment, and that, paradoxically, is when you have to push hardest.

Alexandra Fuller

Childhood is a fundamental part of all human lives, parents or not, since that's how we all start out. And yet babies and young children are so mysterious and puzzling and even paradoxical.

Alison Gopnik

It's paradoxical, that the idea of living a long life appeals to everyone, but the idea of getting old doesn't appeal to anyone.

Andy Rooney

Only in growth, reform, and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Parenting put music in the right place for me. Touring was always the first priority before, but it isn't any more. And, paradoxically, that has made my ability to make music much easier.

Anoushka Shankar

Paradoxically, those who call for family values also tout the wonders of an unregulated market without observing the subtle cultural links between the family they seek to regulate and the market they hold free.

Arlie Russell Hochschild

It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.

Arnold J. Toynbee

It might seem paradoxical given my profession, but I'm not someone who likes to be in the limelight.

Audrey Tautou

In Edna, I created a satiric portrait of my hometown of Melbourne, a large provincial English city paradoxically in far Southeast Asia. She's a theatrical figure, related to vaudeville in some respects. She inhabits a world in which there are comparatively few female exponents of comedy.

Barry Humphries

Real leaders have to live a paradoxical life, where they must break the rules in order to maintain them. If your expectations are high, you're setting yourself up for disillusionment. The land of governance is paved with gray streets, not black or white ones.

Beau Willimon

The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.

Bertrand Russell

We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.

Bertrand Russell

I work very hard at creating complex characters, a mix of positives and negatives. They are all flawed. I believe flaws are almost universal, and they help us understand, sympathise and, paradoxically, feel closer to such characters.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Improvising is wonderful. But, the thing is that you cannot improvise unless you know exactly what you're doing. That's a kind of paradoxical thing about improvising.

Christopher Walken

In my hometown of New Orleans, grief is a public spectacle that, somewhat paradoxically, necessitates celebration. The dead are not mourned so much as they are posthumously venerated with music and dance.

Clint Smith

It is great good health to believe, as the Hindus do, that there are 33 million gods and goddesses in the world. It is great good health to want to understand one's dreams. It is great good health to desire the ambiguous and paradoxical.

Clive Barker

The Sophists' paradoxical talk pieces and their public debates were entertainment in 5th century Greece. And in that world, Socrates was an entertainer.

David Antin

Paradoxically, the United States' determination to protect its troops can be self-defeating. Allies and adversaries see U.S. forces living in secure compounds, eating fancy chow and minimizing their exposure to potential terrorist assaults.

David Ignatius

Cities can be paradoxical places. In the mornings they buzz with commuters, in the evenings they come alive with diners and partygoers, at weekends the streets fill with shoppers and market traders. But amidst the hustle and bustle, even the greatest city can be a lonely place.

David Lammy

Paradoxical as it may seem, to believe in youth is to look backward; to look forward we must believe in age.

Dorothy L. Sayers