Free will, " she agreed, "our greatest gift, the thing that makes life worth living, in spite of all the anguish it brings.

I knew that suffering can purify, that it's a kind of fire that can be worth enduring, but there were degrees of it to which I chose not to subject myself.

Such grief might be to them quite delicious, a delicacy.

Small-town boy meets big-time evil.

As I turned to leave the tent, she said, "Don't worry. Your own mother wouldn't know you."I said, "She never has.

...on a subconscious level we're aware that time isn't enduring, that it is not a required condition of our existence, that there comes a point when we will have no need of it.

Her direct stare probed, as if the story of my life were written in my eyes in a few succinct lines that she could read.

...Here lie your hopes and dreams, shattered and swept aside...

I needed a moment to understand that I'd been dreaming, that I had come awake, and another moment to remember where I had gone to bed.

With courage, you can confidently chase your dreams.

The years in captivity fuels character development

The size of a diamond doesn't indicate the size of my love for you. The earth hasn't produced a diamond that big because my love for you knows no bounds. Ronin Black

My primary goal is to create prosperity.

I know the two great commandments, and I'd better get on with them.

'Baby's Got Her Blue Jeans On' was my anthem as a child. It was about me. I was Baby.

My depression was mild, and I could treat it by myself and pick myself up again. But some people aren't that lucky.

Freshly minted Ph.Ds typically teach the way their favorite professors taught.

I have pleasures, and passions, but the joy of life is gone. I am going under: the morgue yawns for me. I go and look at my zinc-bed there. After all, I had a wonderful life, which is, I fear, over.

The fight for the future of Texas is just beginning.