If you think about something for long enough,' she explained, 'more than likely, that thing will happen.' She tapped her head. 'It's all in the mind.

I like to look at how people work together when they are put into stressful situations, when life stops being cozy.

Art can make a difference because it pulls people up short. It says, don't accept things for their face value; you don't have to go along with any of this; you can think for yourself.

I don't know how to answer. I know what I think, but words in the head are like voices underwater. They are distorted.

I felt like a seed in a pomegranate. Some say that the pomegranate was the real apple of Eve, fruit of the womb, I would eat my way into perdition to taste you.

Happiness is a specific. Misery is a generalization. People usually know exactly why they are happy. They very rarely know why they are miserable.

Quest is at the heart of what I do-the holy grail, and the terror that you'll never find it, seemed a perfect metaphor for life.

I find pieces of myself everywhere, and I cut myself handling them.

Do you fall in love often?" Yes often. With a view, with a book, with a dog, a cat, with numbers, with friends, with complete strangers, with nothing at all.

I would eat my way into perdition to taste you.

Life cannot be calculated. That's the big mistake our civilization made. We never accepted that randomness is not a mistake in the equation -- it is part of the equation.

But why think about that when all the golden lands ahead of you and all kinds of unforseen events wait lurking to surprise you and make you glad you're alive to see?

The author relates George Bernard Shaw's sentiments that polite conversation excludes the only two subjects that matter, religion and politics.

Robbed of a rapt audience, advertisers know that influencing how you spend what to do while depends on having some control over how you spend the resources in your head.

I hope to focus on what I'm passionate about because I think I'd do them best job on them - education, urban education, women and children's issues and literacy.

There isn't much discussion of ruling class in America even in Boston, probably one of the most class-conscious cities in the country?

To possess taste, one must have some soul.

I have always been independent. I like it that way. When someone forces me to do something, I don't do it.

I was named after my mother's maiden name.

So the shortest day came, and the year died, / And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world / Came people singing, dancing, / To drive the dark away.

If you have love you will do all things well.