I hated labels anyway. People didn't fit in slots--prostitute, housewife, saint--like sorting the mail. We were so mutable, fluid with fear and desire, ideals and angles, changeable as water.

She would be half a planet away, floating in a turquoise sea, dancing by moonlight to flamenco guitar.

The phoenix must burn to emerge.

Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft decay.

You were my home, Mother. I had no home but you

Whenever she turned her steep focus to me, I felt the warmth that flowers must feel when they bloom through the snow, under the first concentrated rays of the sun.

I couldn't imagine owning beauty like my mothers. I wouldn't dare.

Oleander time, she said. Lovers who kill each other now will blame it on the wind.

Her hatred glittered irresistibly. I could see it, the jewel, it was sapphire, it was the cold lakes of Norway.

Don't turn over the rocks if you don't want to see the pale creatures who live under them.

I took the volume to a table, opened its soft, ivory pages... and fell into it as into a pool during dry season.

in your dream, you are jealous of tragedies.and the truth is, we all want our own tragedy, because life is pale without it.we want the teeth, the screaming.the survivalthat comes with it.

The battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.

War is not, in itself, a condition so much as the symptom of a condition - that of international anarchy.

Why has no religion this command before all others: Thou shalt work?

Life is amazing: and the teacher had better prepare himself to be a medium for that amazement.

Act without expectation.

[While shooting close-ups] you study real eyes, you study how the light reflects in them, you study the back of the eye, you study the way irises reflect emotion. You go into great scientific detail.

In my religion I really cannot think of cases where violence is justified.

Memory is the miser of the mind; forgetfulness the spendthrift.

I love being a mom. That's the best job I've ever had. All the other stuff I love the same, but being a mom trumps all of it.