For the first time ever we sympathized with the President because we saw how wildly our sphere of influence was misrepresented by those in no position to know what was going on.

In the end, it wasn't death that surprised her but the stubbornness of life.

We knew that Cecilia had killed herself because she was a misfit, because the beyond called to her, and we knew that her sisters, once abandoned, felt her calling from that place, too.

During a warm winter rain ... the basins of her collarbones collected water.

The girls took into their own hands decisions better left to God. They became too powerful to live among us, too self-concerned, too visionary, too blind.

They made us participate in their own madness, because we couldn't help but retrace their steps, rethink their thoughts, and see that none of them led to us.

At that moment Mr. Lisbon had the feeling that he didn't know who she was, that children were only strangers you agreed to live with, and he reached out in order to meet her for the first time.

We realized that the version of the world they rendered for us was not the world they really believed in...

Mr. Lisbon had the feeling that he didn't know who she was, that children were only strangers you agreed to live with.

Household objects lost meaning. A bedside clock became a hunk of molded plastic, telling something called time, in a world marking its passage for some reason.

When we asked him to sum up his impression of the girls' emotional state at that point, he said, "Buffeted but not broken.

Without education … what is man but a splendid slave, a reasoning savage vacillating between the dignity of an intelligence derived from God and the degradation of passion participated with brutes…

People who think nothing could go wrong are usually disappointed.

...the pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety.

[Misquotation; not by Einstein.] If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker. [Apparently remorseful for his role in the development of the atom bomb.]

The work of art will bring to light a new order inherent in things, and this will be: the idea of unity.

A life-long mission has been to counter the notion that political engagement is the spinach we must eat in order to have the dessert of freedom.

We hear only those questions for which we are in a position to find answers.

The fire is the main comfort of the camp, whether in summer or winter, and is about as ample at one season as at another. It is as well for cheerfulness as for warmth and dryness.

Never be afraid to dream.

Not valuing wealth prevents theft.