I am drawn to the ways in which we are shaped by people and by place.

Life is like a bowl of spaghetti. Every once in a while, you get a meatball.

What I have since realized is that if people expect you to be brave, sometimes you pretend that you are, even when you are frightened down to your very bones.

Man needs bread and hyacinths: one to feed the body, and one to feed the soul.

You can't keep the birds of sadness from flying over your head, but you can keep them from nesting in your hair.

I love the way that each book -- any book -- is its own journey. You open it, and off you go. You are changed in some way, large or small, by having traveled with those characters.

Read a lot, live your life, and listen and watch, so that your mind fills up with millions of images.

Sometimes you know in your heart you love someone, but you have to go away before your head can figure it out.

You know, maybe that's all anybody wants, is to be useful. And have somebody else notice it.

Then I thought, boy, isn't that just typical? You wait and wait and wait for something, and then when it happens, you feel sad.

A person isn't a bird. You can't cage a person.

What do you expect? This place is one big anti-climax.

I bleed and breathe Hawks. Even when I played for other teams I felt funny, because I was a Hawk.

The more that Japanese players go to the big leagues to play and succeed, the more that will serve to inspire young kids in Japan to want to become baseball players when they grow up.

The only really interesting questions are the unanswerable ones.

You read so much about the healing power of memoir, but you don't read about the wounding power it has first. The recollection of past events is not, in and of itself, therapeutic.

I think I could make the case for any kind of organized religion, but I'm not an expert in those, so let me narrow my focus to talk about Christianity.

It is not healthy when a nation lives within a nation, as colored Americans are living inside America. A nation cannot live confident of its tomorrow if its refugees are among its own citizens.

Female success stories from sporting events like the Olympic Games have played a role in shifting the Indian perception to see the female athlete as a hero and a role model for young Indian girls.

I may not be the favourite candidate of some people within the Republican establishment, but the voters made a decision.

Decisions are the doorway to change.