I have seen women looking at jewelry ads with a misty eye and one hand resting on the heart, and I only know what they're feeling because that's how I read the seed catalogs in January.

Hope is a renewable option: If you run out of it at the end of the day, you get to start over in the morning.

If you want sweet dreams, you've got to live a sweet life.

Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can't even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain.

Finally, cooking is good citizenship. It's the only way to get serious about putting locally raised foods into your diet, which keeps farmlands healthy and grocery money in the neighborhood.

We came from Bethlehem, Georgia bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes into the jungle.

Maybe life doesn't get any better than this, or any worse, and what we get is just what we're willing to find: small wonders, where they grow.

Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say.

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.

It's what you do that makes your soul.

Pain reaches the heart with electrical speed, but truth moves to the heart as slowly as a glacier.

We should learn to smile as we fall, So much so as when we have it all.

Thanks to words we have been able to rise above the brutes and thanks to words we have often sunk to the level of the demons.

Eventually, it is found out but it takes time especially in the conditions when communication is difficult, when the enemy is making it extremely awkward for information to come out, to go.

I was ironing my own clothes when I was 11 years old. My mental strength goes back to those days.

Being a musician is very easy. My house is full of musical instruments. There's a lot of music, always.

Porsche and BMW drivers are arrogant.

Just when you think you know something, it gets turned around and challenged in some way. But those changes are welcome because you end up learning more.

Some full professors could more accurately be described as empty professors.

You know, real life doesn't just suddenly resolve itself. You have to keep working at it.

If you're not optimistic on some level, then you've given up.