I think that we really fool ourselves about our ability to be safe and secure nowadays.

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.

Every religion has extremists, and extremists have more in common with each other than they do with the common people of their faith.

When we become silent, we become whole. And when we become whole, we become holy.

What is peace? Is it war? No. Is it strife? No. Is it lovely, and gentle, and beautiful, and pleasant, and serene, and joyful? O yes!

Capote wrote every day. He said that's the only way, you have to sit down every day and do it.

Odors have an altogether peculiar force, in affecting us through association; a force differing essentially from that of objects addressing the touch, the taste, the sight or the hearing.

Woes cluster. Rare are solitary woes; They love a train, they tread each other's heel.

I mean, if you're gonna purposely lose your mind, you want to get it back some day. Don't you? Okay, maybe not.

Gamsters and race-horses never last long.

Report followeth not all goodness, except difficulty and rarity be joined thereto.

It's (Phil Niekro's knuckleball) like watching Mario Andretti park a car.