A man can go along obeying all the rules and then it don't matter a damn anymore.

there isn't enough of anything as long as we live. But at intervals a sweetness appears and, given a chance prevails.

Life and death matters, yes. And the question of how to behave in this world, how to go in the face of everything. Time is short and the water is rising.

That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones.

Write about what you know, and what do you know better than your own secrets?

And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.

I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone's heart. I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark.

It ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk about love.

The places where water comes together with other water. Those places stand out in my mind like holy places.

Dreams, you know, are what you wake up from.

But I can hardly sit still. I keep fidgeting, crossing one leg and then the other. I feel like I could throw off sparks, or break a window--maybe rearrange all the furniture.

The way to write is to throw your body at the mark when your arrows are spent.

God gave us the senses to let us feel the love in everyone’s heart, not the illusions brought about by wealth.

America's story is largely an immigrant story. That hasn't changed since the Pilgrims ate their first turkey some four hundred years ago, and they were the original boat people.

Authorship is, according to the spirit in which it is pursued, an infamy, a pastime, a day-labor, a handicraft, an art, a science, a virtue.

There are no ordinary feelings. Just as there are no ordinary spring days or kicked over cans of paint.

There's really nothing wrong with sentimentality... Nothing I wrote is sentimental.

There's never been anyone like Bettie Before. Monroe had Harlow and Detrich, she had all of those blonde bombshells, but there was nothing like Bettie. She was the first icon of her nature.

I think it's very, very hard not to go slightly crazy if you're in the top in politics, especially if you're there for a long time.

[I think the most about] women. They are a complete mystery.

Life is a school of probability.