If cynicism is inevitable as one ages, so is the yearning for innocence. To children heaven is being an adult, and to adults heaven is being children again.

Look in the mirror. The face that pins you with its double gaze reveals a chastening secret.

Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains...

I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.

It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.

I swear I will not dishonor my soul with hatred, but offer myself humbly as a guardian of nature, as a healer of misery, as a messenger of wonder, as an architect of peace.

Wonder is the heaviest element on the periodic table. Even a tiny fleck of it stops time.

No matter how politely one says it, we owe our existence to the farts of blue-green algae.

Words are such small things, like confetti in the brain, and yet they are color and clarify everything, they can stain the mind or warp the feelings.

The heart is a museum, filled with the exhibits of a lifetime's loves.

We live on the leash of our senses. There is no way in which to understand the world without first detecting it through the radar-net of our senses.

No black woman writer in this culture can write "too much". Indeed, no woman writer can write "too much"...No woman has ever written enough.

The soul of a man is strong enough to withstand any adversity.

Your track record, and great achievements may prompt people to invest their resources such as time and money, not their heart.

In its broad sense, civilization means not only comfort in daily necessities but also the refining of knowledge and the cultivation of virtue so as to elevate human life to a higher plane.

I give myself a cheat day where I annihilate my diet. I'm an all-American girl, so I go for a burger and fries and a shake.

If you want to get people to believe something really, really stupid, just stick a number on it.

We are fooles one to another.

When you have a little bit more of a threat, I guess you just have a better sense of urgency, and for me that's when the best comes out in me

Mike Tyson always had a big heart, but one of his problems is that he's short. And he's got kind of a personal attitude. But that don't make him a great fighter.

Whatever plan one makes, there is a hidden difficulty somewhere.