He knew these last lines by heart and mouthed them now in the darkness. My reason for life. Not living, but life. That was the touch. And she was his reason for life, and why he must survive.

The cost of oblivious daydreaming was always this moment of return, the realignment with what had been before and now seemed a little worse.

Wasn't writing a kind of soaring, an achievable form of flight, of fancy, of the imagination?

And though you think the world is at your feet, it can rise up and tread on you.

At that moment, the urge to be writing was stronger than any notion she had of what she might write.

We go on our hands and knees and crawl our way towards the truth

Above all, she wanted to look as though she had not given the matter a moment's thought, and that would take time.

In that shrinking moment he discovered that he had never hated anyone until now. It was a feeling as pure as love, but dispassionate and icily rational.

It wasn't torpor that kept her - she was often restless to the point of irritability. She simply liked to feel that she was prevented from leaving, that she was needed.

He had never before felt so self-consciously young, nor experienced such appetite, such impatience for the story to begin.

Waiting. Simply one person doing nothing, over time, while another approached.

With all eagerness, pursues your sacred dreams.

Sow success and hope unto others, and more success and hope becomes what you permanently reap.

And I advise ye to think well, he told her It's better to be a stray dog in this world than a man without money. I've tried it both ways, and I know. A poor man stinks, and God hates him.

The key to organizing an alternative society is to organize people around what they can do, and more importantly, what they want to do.

I do not improvise in heels.

I don't believe people die. They just go uptown. To Bloomingdales. They just take longer to get back.

Since I was two years old, all I knew was gospel music. That music became such a part of my life it was as natural as dancing. A way to escape from the problems. And my way of release.

The human baby, the human being, is a mosaic of animal and angel.

May you live unenvied, and pass many pleasant years unknown to fame; and also have congenial friends. [Lat., Vive sine invidia, mollesque inglorius annos Exige; amicitias et tibi junge pares.]

Ideologies are cultural memes. They are the most confining of the cultural memes. That's where culture gets real ugly. It is when you rub up against its ideologies.