Intellectual curiosity about one's own illness is certainly born of a desire for mastery. If I couldn't cure myself, perhaps I could at least begin to understand myself.

Every painting is always two paintings: The one you see, and the one you remember.

A book is a collaboration between the one who reads and what is read and, at its best, that coming together is a love story like any other.

There is no future without a past, because what is to be cannot be imagined except as a form of repetition.

That is the strangeness of language: it crosses the boundaries of the body, is at once inside and outside, and it sometimes happens that we don't notice the threshold has been crossed.

Dreams are stories made by and for the dreamer, and each dreamer has his own folds to open and knots to untie.

Our memory fragments don't have any coherence until they're imagined in words. Time is a property of language, of syntax, and tense.

Pain is always emotional. Fear and depression keep constant company with chronic hurting.

I will turn human anatomy into roses and stars and sea. I will dissect the beloveds body in metaphor.

Ture stories can't be told forward, only backward. We invent them from the vantage point of an ever-changing present and tell ourselves how they unfolded.

Memory changes as a person matures.

Person-to-person, most people are honest.

So many people are insanely busy nowadays, and it's easy to say, 'Ah, I'll workout tomorrow.' But you have to set aside a time and stick to that schedule.

I was strongest when I laughed at my weakness.

I felt like the dark hair added like a toughness to my face also, which was really important.

I think of the Roundabout as my musical theater family here in New York City.

The fire and excitement may be gone now that we don't go out there and sing them anymore, but the ring of fire still burns around you and I, keeping our love hotter than a pepper sprout.

I'm not trying to say something super complicated. I allow myself to say certain things that mean a lot to me.

Before there was a proper understanding and a sense of God's presence, the idea that everything would one day end was utterly desolating.

It bothers me when I can't, for example, remember a name. I don't know if it's pre-senility or whether there are too many names packed in our brains.

As far as you can, do some manual work so as to be able to give alms, for it is written that alms and faith purify from sin.