...Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man's faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil's office.

I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am!

She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom.

Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart!

Do anything, save to lie down and die!

Trusting no man as his friend, he could not recognize his enemy when the latter actually appeared.

The sorrow that lay cold in her mother's heart... converted it into a tomb.

There are many things in this world that a child must not ask about.

Love, whether newly born or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world.

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread.

Like all other music, it breathed passion and pathos, and emotions high or tender, in a tongue native to the human heart, wherever educated.

The starting point for greatness is to know what to do with your life.

Thinking this is "The One" becomes an excuse to let your own life deteriorate.

A John Updike is a once-in-a-generation phenomenon, if that generation is lucky: so comfortable in so many genres, the same lively, generous intelligence suffusing all he did.

You can't always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.

Fortunately, all it takes for us to be of one mind is some buttercream frosting.

There is not an acre of ground on the globe that is in possession of its rightful owner, or that has not been taken away from owner after owner, cycle afer cycle, by force and bloodshed.

Enough is ever-receding.

Instead of waiting for perfection, run with what you've got, and fix it as you go.

The function of poetry is religious invocation of the muse; its use is the experience of mixed exaltation and horror that her presence excites.

The Internet...is a series of tubes.