I was always mortified.Didn't they know they were tying thier mothers to the ground? Weren't chains ashamed of their prisoners?

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.

One of the most valuable things one of my art teachers said to me was, ‘Don’t get upset by criticism. Value the fact that at least someone noticed what you did.

Everybody's got the potential for great good and great wrong in them, but it's thechoices we make that define who we really are.

She had a good, strong voice. She smiled with her voice, too. This, he thought, was the magic that had drawn him to her.

In the last few years everything I'd done up to sixty or so has seemed very childish.

It has always been the task of formal education to set up behavior which would prove useful or enjoyable later in a student's life.

It's so funny looking back, but my so-called overnight success actually took 15 years. I remember when I didn't have any money, and my only car was mom's Hyundai.

it is in middle age that the interest of a life attains its highest point.

Boys dream of native girls who bring breadfruit, Whatever they are.

When men are arrived at the goal, they should not turn back.

The world is looking more and more segmented, the difference between people is becoming greater.