I stopped going to mass, and boy, it was painful for me, and it was certainly painful for my family, but I just couldn't ratify their behavior and their decisions anymore by showing up on Sundays.

The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.

I would be the most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.

A finished person is a boring person.

There is a little boy inside the man who is my brother... Oh, how I hated that little boy. And how I love him too.

After all those years as a woman hearing 'not thin enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough, not this enough, not that enough,' almost overnight I woke up one morning and thought, 'I'm enough.'

Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.

There is a lot of talk now about metal detectors and gun control. Both are good things. But they are no more a solution than forks and spoons are a solution to world hunger.

Look back, to slavery, to suffrage, to integration and one thing is clear. Fashions in bigotry come and go. The right thing lasts.

You are the only person alive who has sole custody of your life ... Your entire life ... Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank account, but your soul.

America is a country that seems forever to be toddler or teenager, at those two stages of human development characterized by conflict between autonomy and security.

Right person suffers a lot than wrong person in that place where injustice is called justice.

It had taken skill, tact, an ability to choose friends well, and a great deal of luck... Luck was always part of it, one way or another

Nothing can come of nothing. There is no room in my world for nothing.

I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat.

Should alcoholics go to liquor stores?

Wrote a science fiction novel about a man who wins an argument with his wife, but it was rejected for being too farfetched.

I'm never getting too lonely because it's the kind of disease where you might sit in front of the TV with three bags of biscuits, rather than communicate with the world.

A lot of churches have not moved with the times.

I love making people laugh. And I love laughing.

I demand excellence from the people I work with.