I lead a life of severe self-control mitigated by moments of impulse.

I try and picture you reading this -- there is a sense that as I write I try and get nearer to you, connect in my mind with you.

I'm not greedy. I just want one person. The world is so big and there are so many people. But I only want one.

Somehow when you see a politician kiss a baby, shake a hand -- kiss anything -- it is tainted.

Expressing emotion is not so easy. He has to remind himself that English is not her first language. Expressing emotion can be difficult even when the words are familiar.

She was wearing a beautiful dress with straps designed to be eaten off her shoulders.

While writing is like a joyful release, editing is a prison where the bars are my former intentions and the abusive warden my own neuroticism.

Nationalism is form of collective narcissism, where the citizens possess an inflated self-love of "their own people, " to the exclusion of other human beings.

Bravery is a cheap and vulgar quality of which the brightest instances are frequently found in the lowest savages.

It's not new that architecture can profoundly affect a place, sometimes transform it. Architecture and any art can transform a person, even save someone.

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.

Being young is wonderful. But one of the secrets of being a human individual - a mature human individual shall we put it rather grandly - is that you can see this desire in perspective.

Going around under an umbrella interferes with one's looking up at the sky.

Civilized people have exchanged some part of their chances of happiness for a measure of security.

Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain't got nothing more to say.

And if I have a strong point, it's that I like to believe it's not cheap or schmaltzy sentimentality.