I don't quite comprehend why you'd force someone to bow when the purpose of the gesture is to display allegiance and respect.

You could do anything, if only you dared. And deep down, you know it, too. That’s what scares you most.

Libraries were full of ideas-perhaps the most dangerous and powerful of all weapons.

We all bear scars,... Mine just happen to be more visible than most.

We each survive in our own way.

I was as unburdened as a piece of dandelion fluff, and he was the wind that stirred me about the world.

No. I can survive well enough on my own— if given the proper reading material.

You could be great. You could rattle the stars. You could do anything if only you dared.

I worry because I care. Gods help me, I know I shouldn't, but I do. So I will always tell you to be careful, because I will always care what happens.

Sometimes, the wicked will tell us things just to confuse us–to haunt our thoughts long after we've faced them.

Some things you hear with your ears. Others, you hear with your heart.

What's fair ain't necessarily right.

I'd just hit the Billboard thing, and I had a good feeling. About a month ago, I received a call that said I was in the running, that I'd made the final 25. So I just wanted to place.

If you can react the same way to winning and losing, that's a big accomplishment.

I am a rubbish flirt.

A minister has to be able to read a clock. At noon, it's time to go home and turn up the pot roast and get the peas out of the freezer.

One of the main goals of self-education is to eradicate that vanity in us without which we would never have been educated.

I was taking chemical engineering. But I went into the army after that. When I came out of the army, I was a different person. I met a lot of good jazz players in the army.

He thought, or said, or sang, I did not know that I was so empty, to be so full.

The reader wants to see something happen between pages one and four hundred, and nothing happens if the characters don't change.