I thought clay must feel happy in the good potter's hand.

She would be half a planet away, floating in a turquoise sea, dancing by moonlight to flamenco guitar.

The phoenix must burn to emerge.

Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft decay.

You were my home, Mother. I had no home but you

Whenever she turned her steep focus to me, I felt the warmth that flowers must feel when they bloom through the snow, under the first concentrated rays of the sun.

I hated labels anyway. People didn't fit in slots--prostitute, housewife, saint--like sorting the mail. We were so mutable, fluid with fear and desire, ideals and angles, changeable as water.

I couldn't imagine owning beauty like my mothers. I wouldn't dare.

Oleander time, she said. Lovers who kill each other now will blame it on the wind.

Her hatred glittered irresistibly. I could see it, the jewel, it was sapphire, it was the cold lakes of Norway.

Don't turn over the rocks if you don't want to see the pale creatures who live under them.

Sincere doubts, handled properly, can become a gift.

My mom is a really good cook. I didn't get the cooking gene, but she cooks this really amazing dinner every Christmas, and that's always really fun.

I think it is incredibly important to be open and accessible and treat people fairly and look them in the eye and tell them what is on your mind.

A teenager usually wants to try to get people to notice him in some way, to feel like someone gives a damn. Me, all that attention, I just wanted to fade into the background. Be invisible. Disappear.

Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me... aren't you?

The hunger of passions is the greatest disease.

Take the tone of the company you are in...

In the music industry, you meet some not very nice people, some very strange characters.

My goal is that after I am dead and gone, I want people to remember me for the person I am.

America is an outlier in the world of democracies when it comes to the structure and conduct of elections.