If you look hard enough, chaos turns into order the way letters turn into words.

Look. I have a strategy. Why expect anything? If you don’t expect anything, you don’t get disappointed.

You show you care, you die.You show you fear, you die.You show nothing, maybe you live.

Simply to endure is to triumph.

Trying to remember, I have learned, is like trying to clutch a handful of fog. Trying to forget, like trying to hold back the monsoon.

Instead, we linger over a luxury that costs nothing: Imagining what may be.

A man who doles out sweets, and slaps, with the same hand.

Sometimes when we’re in situations where we feel we’re not in control, we do things, especially things that take a lot of energy, as a way of making ourselves feel we have some power.

This affliction--hope--is so cruel and stubborn, I believe it will kill me

Inside my head I carry: my baby goat, my baby brother, my ama's face, our family's future. My bundle is light. My burden is heavy.

Long time I been on my own, but now really I'm alone. I survive the killing, the starving, all the hate of the Khmer Rouge, but I think maybe now I will die of this, of broken heart.

I can feel myself holding a child, thought Joanna. Sleep, my child, sleep, I tell you. The child is warm and I am sad.

We took our food order to go, in greasy paper bags, and walked across Columbus Circle to Central Park. He helped me up the giant prehistoric-looking rock just off the playground.

being sixteen in the pants I died full of questions

I get to be the first doctor in the family [because of the honorary degree they're giving me].

Politics and religious leaders [are hindered] by their egotism.

A true religious instinct never deprived man of one single joy; mournful faces and a sombre aspect are the conventional affectations of the weak-minded.

Look at someone like Edward Norton. A truly phenomenal actor. He's definitely went to school and trained.

Every Sailor has the potential to lead," said Mullen, "I don't care if it's a seaman recruit or someone higher ranking than myself. Where there's a will, there's a way.

What people want is the extra, the emotional bonus they get when they buy something they love.

Humility is a strange thing. The minute you think you've got it, you've lost it.