Deep down, you see, I long to be arcane, esoteric. I would love to confound people with their own language.

Remember that at any given moment there are a thousand things you can love.

Life tells you to take the elevator, but love tells you to take the stairs.

Kindness connects to who you are, while niceness connects to how you want to be seen.

The older I get, the more I lose my ability to breathe.

A photograph it a souvenir of a memory. It is not a moment. It is the looking at the photograph that becomes the moment. Your own moment.

The words that matter always stay.

motif, n. You don’t love me as much as I love you. You don’t love me as much as I love you. You don’t love me as much as I love you.

It was a mistake," you said. But the cruel thing was, it felt like the mistake was mine, for trusting you.

You have to believe there are kisses and laughs and risks worth taking.

Things that matter are not easy. Feelings of happiness are easy. Happiness is not. Flirting is easy. Love is not. Saying you’re friends is easy. Being friends is not.

Because lies outpace the truth, sooner or later you will trip up on your own tongue.

for a moment, she let herself be defeated, wished herself not exactly annihilation but into a temporary absense, into being nowhere and no one just for a little while.

I gave my heart to the Americans and thought of nothing else but raising my banner and adding my colors to theirs.

Love is all about... whistles.

It's better to be nominated for awards than not to be nominated for them, but of course to some degree such awards [National Book Award] are always subjective.

The beginning of the way to heaven, is to feel that we are on the way to hell.

Contempt is frequently regulated by fashion.

It's been in the back of my head for five or six years, but more on the local level to get involved and try to create a better environment for my children and grandchildren.

What's unique about Washington is that no one's from here. Almost everybody came here to change the world, to make a difference.

Did you ever meet someone named Caleb?" I say. 'Caleb," Fernando says. "Yes, there was a Caleb in my initiate class. Brilliant, but he was... what's the colloquial term for it? A suck-up." he smirks.