Falling in love is better than standing in hate.

A genuine smile is one of the world’s rarest treasures.

A fish that is afraid of drowning in a river is ignorant of its gifts.

A diamond earns its sparkle from the pressure it endures.

It is in the storm, not the calm, that a rainbow is born.

A determined seed cannot be hidden from the world, not even by dirt.

Calm skies don't make skillful eagles.

If you cry in the rain, only the sky will see your tears.

Birds keep singing beautiful songs, even if they have no audience.

Today's storms help you appreciate tomorrow’s sunshine.

Train the ears to hear more, the eyes to see more, the hands to do more, the feet to accomplish more, the mind to think more, the heart to feel more, and the soul to love more.

...at dawn, the grains of sleep turn to floating black spots, then out of focus the world tilts, and the cat scratches at the door...

Although Omaha is my birthplace and the place I grew up, I don't see myself spending extended amounts of time there. I feel almost more comfortable and more at peace in New York.

You don't have to know everything in the world. We aren't supposed to. It makes you boring in mixed company if you can't be interested and ask questions of other people.

I am lucky: I have fantastic doctors and a fantastic dentist.

You are always working towards the moments in which characters experience reckonings or insight or change. I like to track them past those moments.

Babies should be classified as an antidepressant. It's pretty hard to be in a bad mood around a 5-month-old baby.

The past is a script we are constantly rewriting.

Once a pallid Vestal Doubted truth in blue; Listed red in ruin, Harried every hue; Barricaded vision, Garbed herself in sighs; Ridiculed the birthmarks Of the butterflies.

Better make penitents by gentleness than hypocrites by severity.

The whole world was nothing but an exile with no hope of a return.