Books are for those without real lives, he thought. And they are no real replacement.

If the thrill of hunting were in the hunt, or even in the marksmanship, a camera would do just as well.

You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.

Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.

The sky slowly pulled up its blue dress to reveal night.

The more you love someone, he came to think, the harder it is to tell them. It surprised him that strangers didn't stop each other on the street to say I love you.

His voice was handsome and broken, like a cobblestone street.

To feel alone is to be alone.

Words are capable of making experience more vivid, and also of organizing it. They can scare us, and they can comfort us.

When we eat factory-farmed meat we live, literally, on tortured flesh. Increasingly, that tortured flesh is becoming our own.

It has shown me that everything is illuminated in the light of the past. It is always along the side of us...on the inside, looking out.

Genius thinks out of box when leader adjusts the size of box.

My favorite part of my appearance is my height. I'm five foot one and I feel feminine being small.

Washington D.C.! Congress is full of self-declared outsiders.

Despite the obstacles of race and class, I was always taught that I could accomplish anything I set my mind to. African-American writers, for me, were a beacon, a guiding force.

The tree on the mountain takes whatever the weather brings. If it has any choice at all, it is in putting down roots as deeply as possible."---Each New Day

In the end, for congenial sympathy, for poetry, for work, for original feeling and expression, for perfect companionship with one's friends--give me the country.

It is quite easy to remark the absurdities and contradictions of a country's social system from outside its borders, but very difficult if one has been brought up in it.

It was in the Theatre St. Philippe (they has laid a temporary floor over the parquette seats) in the city we now call New Orleans, in the month of September, and in the year 1803.

An envious man grows lean at another's fatness.

If your sleight of hand causes you to break eye contact with your audience, it is too advanced for your skill level.