Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion, and it is the beginning of morality.

...falling in love could be achieved in a single word—a glance.

come back, come back to me

I've never had a moment's doubt. I love you. I believe in you completely. You are my dearest one. My reason for life.

A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.

True intelligence requires fabulous imagination.

When its gone, you'll know what a gift love was. you'll suffer like this. So go back and fight to keep it.

I believe the novella is the perfect form of prose fiction. It is the beautiful daughter of a rambling, bloated ill-shaven giant (but a giant who's a genius on his best days).

I'm holding back, delaying the information. I'm lingering in the prior moment because it was a time when other outcomes were still possible.

Observing human variety can give pleasure, but so too can human sameness.

What idiocy, to racing into this story and its labyrinths, sprinting away from our happiness among the fresh spring grasses by the oak.

People no longer try to decipher the mystery of life but choose instead to be a part of it.

Last, but not least -- in fact, this is most important -- you need a happy ending. However, if you can create tragic situations and jerk a few tears before the happy ending, it will work much better.

I want to touch you.''And if you did touch me, what then?''I would find a language of beginning.

Photographs shape the past in our own image.

That is a risk. Risk/reward, life's chances. There's always that part of it.

It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. What scares you, is not your weaknesses, but your strengths.

My wife... its difficult to say what she does... she sells seashells on the seashore.

We dream our dreams, and sometimes they take us to places we never anticipate. But they are our dreams, and we go where they lead.

I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as they are chiefly agricultural.