I'm asking you, I'm begging you, could you please shut your mouth for just five minutes?" You can imagine the reaction. They ended up in the basement.

A snowball in the face is surely the perfect beginning to a lasting friendship.

… it was raining on Himmel Street when the world ended for Liesel Meminger. The sky was dripping. Like a tap that a child has tried its hardest to turn off but hasn’t quite managed.

Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day.

Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness.

Sometimes people are beautiful. Not in looks. Not in what they say. Just in what they are.

I have to say that although it broke my heart, I was, and still am, glad I was there.

Please, trust me, I most definitely can be cheerful. I can be amiable. Agreeable. Affable. And that's only the A's. Just don't ask me to be nice. Nice has nothing to do with me.

I guess that’s the beauty of books. When they finish they don’t really finish.

Sometimes I just survive. But sometimes I stand on the rooftop of my existence, arms stretched out, begging for more.

If only she could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it for laughter.

One should ... be able to see things as hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.

The important point of spiritual practice is not to try to escape your life, but to face it - exactly and completely.

The craft Emmys are kind of the kids table at Thanksgiving. You're not really invited to the big dance. It's still really, really exciting, and the statue still counts.

I have always maintained the importance of Aunts

If you're a writer, you want to get your soul out there, where people can look at it.

Imagination is so much harder to face than reality.

Technology has outstripped our knowledge of self.

Shake hands with Pain, give greeting unto Grief, Those angels in disguise, and thy glad soul From height to height, from star to shining star, Shall climb and claim blest immortality.

You have to have a sense of humor if you follow politics. Otherwise, the sheer fraudulence of it all will get you down.

When I was having that alphabet soup, I never thought that it would pay off.