How seriously can I take myself? I'm just one of six billion people, right?

You have to speak your dream out loud.

And it occurs to me that maybe the reason my mother was so exhausted all the time wasn’t because she was doing so much but because she was feeling so much.

Raising people is not some lark. It's serious work with serious repercussions. It's air-traffic control. You can't step out for a minute; you can barely pause to scratch your ankle.

Appreciation is the purest,strongest form of love. It is the outward-bound kind of love that asks for nothing and gives everything.

The mother is the most essential piece on the board, the one you must protect. Only she has the range. Only she can move in multiple directions. Once she's gone, it's a whole different game.

We're never ready for the things that happen. When the big stuff happens, we're always looking in the other direction.

He defined me first, as parents do. Those early characterizations can become the shimmering self-image we embrace or the limited, stifling perception we rail against for a lifetime.

That to fly requires chaotic, sometimes even violent passages--becomes a metaphor for all of life's most meaningful endeavors.

I am an average mother in almost every way, so yes, much to my regret, I do yell at my children.

I didn't know adults could be changed. I thought they were finished pieces, baked through and kiln dried.

The bats stop flying above and the moon stands still. He commands the air and the sky and my body.

An educated man believing in a this-that vile sky-god rewarding him-her, but punishing your enemies with hell and fire, is uneducated.

The gum looked fresh. I sniffed it and it smelled all right. I licked it and waited for a while. When I did not die, I crammed it into my mouth: Wrigley's Double Mint.

In grief we know the worst of what we feel But who can tell the end of what we fear?

I don't really find girls to be any more dramatic or delicate than boys; I've known plenty of little boys who've had miserable breakdowns over things... in fact, I was one of them!

When I finish a job, I surrender it completely. I have to, because after that, it really is out of my hands.

If the government was as afraid of disturbing the consumer as it is of disturbing business, this would be some democracy.

Never hate jealous people. They are jealous because they think you are better than them.

Those who think that it is easy to play chess are mistaken. During a game a player lives on his nerves, and at the same time he must be perfectly composed.

I try to watch only real things, which basically amounts to C-Span for me. I like real people in real situations. I learn from that.