Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

But, in her life, nothing was going to happen. Such was the will of God! The future was a dark corridor, and at the far end the door was bolted.

As for the piano, the faster her fingers flew over it, the more he marveled. She struck the keys with aplomb and ran from one end of the keyboard to the other without a stop.

She was as sated with him as he was tired of her. Emma had rediscovered in adultery all the banality of marriage.

The smooth folds of her dress concealed a tumultuous heart, and her modest lips told nothing of her torment. She was in love.

An infinity of passion can be contained in one minute, like a crowd in a small space.

...those works that don't touch the heart, it seems to me, miss the true aim of Art.

Of all the icy blasts that blow on love, a request for money is the most chilling.

Financial demands, of all the rough winds that blow upon our love, (are) quite the coldest and the most biting.

And she felt as though she had been there, on that bench, for an eternity. For an infinity of passion can be contained in one minute, like a crowd in a small space.

One's duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and not accept all the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us.

I wanted to get lost to find myself.

A society can exist - many do exist - without writing, but no society can exist without reading.

With a cigar like in life, you got to have some length, and some girth.

My word, Severus, that I shall never reveal the best of you?' Dumbledore sighed, looking down into Snape's ferocious, anguished face. 'If you insist.

This happens to me every couple of years. I'll look at someone I respect and I'll realize that he's outworking me. It changes the way I behave for the next half decade.

America is very decentralized in how it supports the humanities, unlike European countries where virtually everything stems from the central government.

There are some dreams that get stuck between your teeth when you sleep, so that when you open your mouth to yawn awake they fly right out of you.

All men would be cowards if they could.

A sacrifice to be real must cost, must hurt, must empty ourselves.

A garden makes all our senses swim with pleasure.