He took the box but did not avail himself of a tissue. She understood. Sometimes it was comforting to feel the wetness of grief's tears on your face.

How can I love you if I don't know what hurts you?

Often, the human animal dresses terror in rage, and expresses both in a way unlike either.

... the object of learning was not to build a better mousetrap but to ask a better question.

Silence was not the absence of sound but was itself a sound that could be loud or soft, soothing or disturbing, complex or simple.

The young accept the extraordinary as normal because they do not compare their lives with those of others when everyone is like them.

There was an end to weeping. Mourning, however, ebbed and surged but never ceased flowing.

Husbands are like fires - they go out when they're left unattended.

I'm a member of the 1960s generation. We didn't have any wisdom.

The greatest thing in life is health.

When thousands of people discover that their story is also someone else's story, they have the chance to write a new story together.

... the novelist is bound by the reasonable possibilities, not the probabilities, of his culture.

I will be free, no lover's kiss to bind me to earth, no bliss of love to counteract actual bliss.

Young people in particular need real options to find a decent job and to lift their lives. I'm not sure the new Islamist governments will be the best to promote prosperity and growth.

Politics is pervasive. Everything is political and the choice to be "apolitical" is usually just an endorsement of the status quo and the unexamined life.

The realist sees reality as concrete. The optimist sees reality as clay.

I'm lucky. Usually you're dead to get your own museum, but I'm still alive to see mine.