In every person's face, there is one place that seems to express them most accurately. With my grandmother, you always looked at her mouth.

We all - in the end - die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories.

Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at first but it becomes beautiful later.

Even as a feminist, my whole life I'd been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I'd thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother.

Everybody in America grew up without a father even if they had one. It was the fifties. They were working.

Often, I think, displaced people imagine themselves leading double lives. So a portion of my identity has always been privately siphoned into what would have been if I had stayed in Wisconsin.

Once upon a time, my mother lived in the posh downtown of Homs, Syria. She described my grandfather as a king in a storybook, atop a horse, wearing a didashah and pointing a long arm.

Reading-not occasionally, not only on vacation but everyday-gives me nourishment and enlarges my life in mysterious and essential ways.

So many things that seemed crucial and excruciatingly hard ended and then didn't matter anymore, forever after

We come into the world whole, all of us, but we don't know that, don't know that life will be taking large chunks out of us, forever.

The first person besides my mother who believed in me was a man whose last name I never knew. He was my boss, the manager of Swenson's Ice Cream shop.

The more you offer yourself to make life better for someone, the more you empty yourself of the load of destiny you carry into the world. Serve till you empty all.

I don't have a lot of patience for movies that aren't cleanly told.

I look forward to working with our leadership team to advance the causes of smaller government, lower taxes, eliminating terrorism, and providing affordable health care, among other issues.

The soldiers in Iraq are fighting, suffering and dying . . . anonymously and pointlessly, while the rest of us are free to buckle ourselves into the family vehicle and head off to the malls and shop.

I've got everything I had 20 years ago, except now it's all lower.

If you want to understand poetry, You have to go to its origin, If you want to understand the poet, You have to go to the Poet's home.

Most pro bodybuilders have bad relationships with their fathers. We want to prove something.

Sure, I've seen people like you before - but I had to pay an admission.

Take the high road; it's far less crowded.