I think one of the hardest things about doing a book in the first person is that to a certain extent each day, when you begin to do your work, you're climbing into somebody else's skin.

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.

If you seek the presence of God, you will see the glory of God:

I'm always looking for the idea in a scene or the philosophy that makes a scene worth existing beyond exposition.

There wasn't a key moment when I knew I wanted to quit.

I wanna make a jigsaw puzzle that's 40,000 pieces. And when you finish it, it says 'go outside.'

If the eye of the heart is open, in each atom there will be one hundred secrets

A woman who is not quite a fool will forgive your being but a man, if you are surely that. . .

Life can change in an instant; don't be so worried about the future that you forget to celebrate what you have right now.

A man can do all things if he will.

God is the shield of the nonviolent.

We're [Ocean Conservancy group] trying to convince people it's a bad idea to catch fish faster than they can reproduce. That should be a duh, but it's still going on.