A faint smell of lilac filled the air. There was always lilac in this part of town. Where there were grandmothers, there was always lilac.

But there is so much more to do for the city we love... a Dallas with roads as strong as our businesses, parks as beautiful as our children, a downtown as tall as our imagination.

Dallas is a great city, and it's worth fighting for.

Buying a book is not about obtaining a possession, but about securing a portal.

In many ways, our campaign this year will be the same as last time: We're still going to focus on fixing up basics and cleaning up ethics at City Hall.

Now it's time to focus on basics for people in our neighborhoods... and real ethics reform at City Hall.

The city has to do what any citizen or family does, when you have a dream. You tighten your belt. You sacrifice some luxuries. Above all, you don't waste a dime.

The first book we fall in love with shapes us every bit as much as the first person we fall in love with.

Dallas is a positive, get-it done city.

The conditions conducive to deep thought have become increasingly rare in our highly mediated lives... Now we live in an attention economy, where the most in-demand commodity is 'eyeballs.

Do the children who prefer books set in the real, ordinary, workaday world ever read as obsessively as those who would much rather be transported into other worlds entirely?

Self-reverence self-knowledge self-control. These three alone lead to sovereign power.

My blood in his veins." ~Jace

To the courtiers flushed with wine, life was pleasure, and pleasure life.

Reality itself is too twisted.

Let me look at the foulness and ugliness of my body. Let me see myself as an ulcerous sore running with every horrible and disgusting poison.

History is like a ghost. It is as dead as alive.

In the end they'll judge me anyway, so whatever.

Suffering itself is beloved: love and suffering are far closer to each other than love and pleasure.

We can't dwell upon another's ingratitude without using up our time and talents unprofitably.

I would like to employ more people but I don't want to empower my charities at the cost of exploiting people or doing things that are not useful, so I'm working on that.