Doing good doesn't always make you feel good. I don't care what they tell you in church.

I didn't know how to say goodbye. Words were stupid. They said so little. Yet they opened up holes you could fall into and never climb out of again.

When I wrote, I felt better, as if I had remade the world all of a piece, the way I wanted it to be, not the way it was.

A person has to be strong in life. A person must practice strength, even if they don't feel it.

Most of our miseries we bring on ourselves. And they're the sum of our own stupidity.

A person doesn't ask permission to fall in love; not even of themselves.

You don't trade in the devil you know for the one you don't know.

Because I had already resolved that if you're afraid of love, your heart will break anyway, only in not half so nice a fashion as it does when you let somebody love you.

When I write I am the real me.

The most important thing we ever have to learn in life is to live with our choices.

Are all American girls as daft as you, Rachel?" "I hope so," I said.

God will create the best opportunity for you. To find those opportunities is your responsibility.

Socialism and capitalism are not mutually exclusive. They can — and should — be used in tandem. Either alone is death by overdose. Balance.

One of the things we can be sure of over the July 4th weekend is that news reports will keep telling us how many of us are going to die in automobile accidents.

The idea of a universal mind or Logos would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory.

I just finished writing an essay about William Maxwell, an American writer whose work I admire very much.

No one messes around with a nerd's computer and escapes unscathed.

It's a war out there and either they're going to hurt you or you're going to hurt them. I just go out there and play with my heart.

Opening a book in the middle of a chapter always made me feel like I was interrupting a group of strangers, wandering unannounced into their villages and apartments and taxis and slums.

Some people just don't want to see change, but thankfully there are a lot of people more optimistic for something new in music, even with the bigger picture like with Barack Obama getting elected.

Today's dialogue has succeeded in reinforcing the need for international partnerships and cooperation in tackling the reality of climate change.