I have realised just how important it is to readers to feel that fictional stories are based on reality.

...we take comfort in the symmetries we find in life because they suggest a design where there is none.

Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.

there are two types of people in the world: those who prefer to be sad among others, and those who prefer to be sad alone.

What about you? Are you happiest and saddest right now that you've ever been?" "Of course I am." "Why?" "Because nothing makes me happier and nothing makes me sadder than you.

She struggled with her sadness, but tried to conceal it, to divide it into smaller and smaller parts and scatter these in places she thought no one would find them.

To hike out alone in the desert; to sleep on the valley floor on a night with no moon, in the pitch black, just listening to the boom of silence: you can't imagine what that's like.

That's what I do. Watch movies and read. Sometimes I even pretend to write, but I'm not fooling anyone. Oh, and I go to the mailbox.

When will you learn that there isn't a word for everything?

I've reached the age where bruises are formed from failures within rather than accidents without.

So many words get lost. They leave the mouthand lose their courage, wandering aimlessly until they are swept into the gutter like dead leaves. On rainy days you can hear their chorus rushing past.

Frequent friction when love becomes political.

I'm a Cynster--I've been raised to acquire, defend, and protect. My family is the core of my existence--without a family, without children, I'd have nothing to protect, no reason to acquire.

I'm not at all contemptuous of comforts, but they have their place and it is not first.

I was never very interested in boys - and there were plenty of them - vying with one another to see how many famous women they would get into the hay.

Alliances are part of our destiny as a nation, part of our future as a nation and this is what guides me in my policy, what guides my government as a whole.

Our problem is not that we aim too high and miss, but that we aim too low and hit.

Frankly, no newspaper is set up to monitor for cheats and fabricators.

Human social institutions can effect the course of human evolution. Just as climate, food supply, predators, and other natural forces of selection have molded our nature, so too can our culture.

Everybody is God. Everybody is the devil. And if you don't realize you have both parts, that's what really causes problems.

Zeus detests above all the boasts of a proud tongue.