The curse of the romantic is a greed for dreams an intensity of expectation that in the end diminishes the reality.

When I was very very young seven years old I heard there was school where you could go to learn to draw. That was my absolute driven passion to become an artist or a painter. So the romantic realist in me I studied to be a graphic design artist and an art teacher.

I don't think of death in a romantic way anymore.

I wouldn't feel satisfied being on set every day doing a romantic comedy - I'd be bored to death.

Lidia Bastianich sorry but kind of boring. I mean I love Lidia but you can fall asleep watching her. And Mario Batali? I love Mario to death... but he's not romantic or sensual. Those are the things I bring to the table.

The death of Pope John Paul II led many of different faiths and of no faith to acknowledge their debt to the Roman Catholic Church for holding on to absolutes that the rest of us can measure ourselves against.

Death was like love a romantic escape.

I think a nice romantic dinner should be saved for when you and the girl you're dating or seeing have something special and it's a more special occasion.

I'm opening up my heart to the idea of dating. It's funny - my friends would always come to me for romantic advice. I know nothing and things have changed since I was dating in high school! I'm really trying hard to spend this time working on myself.

Are you kidding? I'm a terrible cook but John is a really great one. Literally I never cook. The whole time we were dating I prepared two officially romantic meals. Both of them were such disasters that he begs me never to go into the kitchen again.

When I started dating I had this kind of Romeo and Juliet fateful romantic idea about love which was almost that you were a victim and there was a lot of pain involved and that was how it should be.

I'm not cynical about marriage or romance. I enjoyed being married. And although being single was fun for a while there was always the risk of dating someone who'd owned a lunch box with my picture on it.

I'm 31 now. I think I'm beginning to understand what life is what romance is and what a relationship means.

I am a hopeless romantic and I love to spoil my girlfriends.

You know the man of my dreams might walk round the corner tomorrow. I'm older and wiser and I think I'd make a great girlfriend. I live in the realm of romantic possibility.

I think that the romantic impulse is in all of us and that sometimes we live it for a short time but it's not part of a sensible way of living. It's a heroic path and it generally ends dangerously. I treasure it in the sense that I believe it's a path of great courage. It can also be the path of the foolhardy and the compulsive.

The Roman Catholic Church isn't going to change its theologies.

There is something sinister something quite biographical about what I do - but that part is for me. It's my personal business. I think there is a lot of romance melancholy. There's a sadness to it but there's romance in sadness. I suppose I am a very melancholy person.

You know maybe I was just born in the wrong time but I love all things romantic. Puffy understands that. For my last birthday he covered my hotel room floor with rose petals and had flowers and candles all over the room.

It's easy to get wrapped up in sharing everyday life with a partner. It's fun to get lost in love and romance. It's the best. But holding on to yourself while doing that is the most important thing.

The compensation of a very early success is a conviction that life is a romantic matter. In the best sense one stays young.

The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance - the idea that anything is possible.

When I first thought of the idea for 'Sweet Valley High ' I loved the idea of high school as microcosm of the real world. And what I really liked was how it moved things on from 'Sleeping Beauty'-esque romance novels where the girl had to wait for the hero. This would be girl-driven very different I decided - and indeed it is.

Romance and novel paint beauty in colors more charming than nature and describe a happiness that humans never taste. How deceptive and destructive are those pictures of consummate bliss!