I am not in love with him, I am in love with ghosts. So is he, he's in love with ghosts.

Do you understand the sadness of geography?

Every night I cut out my heart. But in the morning it was full again

Nowadays he doesn't think of his wife, though he knows he can turn around and evoke every move of her, describe any aspect of her, the weigh of her wrist on his heart during the night.

Men had always been the reciters of poetry in the desert.

This was the time in her life that she fell upon books as the only door out of her cell. They became half her world.

He knows that the only way he can accept losing her is if he can continue to hold her or be held by her. If they can somehow nurse each other out of this. Not with a wall.

How can you smile as though your whole life hasn't capsized

She had always wanted words, she loved them, grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape. Whereas I thought words bent emotions like sticks in water.

The Englishman left months ago, Hana, he's with the Bedouin or in some English garden with its phlox and shit.

I once traveled with a guide who was taking me to Faya. He didn't speak for nine hours. At the end of it he pointed to the horizon and said, 'Faya!' That was a good day.

If there were a little more silence, if we all kept quiet...maybe we could understand something.

The only real good technology is no technology at all. Technology is taxation without representation, imposed by our elitist species (man) upon the rest of the natural world.

One shouldn't be too inquisitive in life Either about God's secrets or one's wife.

One does not allow the plumbers to decide the temperature, depth and timing of a bath.

Once you have power, you are inevitably surrounded by people who have their own agendas and will tell you whatever advances them.

It's always been my philosophy: Turn the page. If something falls through, turn the page. It's over with, get used to it, get on with it. Very simple. It's always worked for me.

No one in their right mind can say to me with a straight face that the Patriot Act has not aggregated the Fourth Amendment.

The point of living, and of being an optimist, is to be foolish enough to believe the best is yet to come.

I just want the bullying to stop. That is all I ever wanted. I used to love going to school. Now I hate it.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.