Maybe when your mother died young, you became instantly old.

I love the solitude of reading. I love the deep dive into someone else's story, the delicious ache of a last page.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

Poetry calls us to pause. There is so much we overlook, while the abundance around us continues to shimmer, on its own.

There is a place to stand where you can see so many lights you forget you are one of them.

... the real heroes of race and culture would always be the people who stepped out of their own line to make a larger circle.

You know, those of us who leave our homes in the morning and expect to find them there when we go back - it's hard for us to understand what the experience of a refugee might be like.

This is the world I want to live in. The shared world.

Being good felt like a heavy coat, so I took it off.

Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth.

Energy is everything. Rubbing happy and sad together creates energy.

God judges mankind by the standard of the only God-man who ever lived, Jesus Christ. Jesus, the innocent Lamb of God, stands between our sin and the judgment of God the Father.

The voices in my head wouldn't shut up, so I let them write their story.

The Commonwealth is a vital and positive partnership between countries striving to develop trade relations and promote democracy and human rights, united by shared values.

The neighborhood stores are an important part of a city child's life.

Straight roads are for fast cars, turns are for fast drivers.

German and English firms operate internationally, while French firms do not. The only place where they all have work is in China. Anybody can sell himself in China!

I wanted to tell her not to entertain despair like this. Despaire wasn't a guest, you didn't play its favorite music, find it a comfortable chair. Despair was the enemy." -white oleander

It was good, really, that this external world still existed, if only as a place of refuge.

Diplomacy is much more than just talking to your friends... You've got to talk to people who aren't our friends, and even people you dislike.

I lost faith in the Oscars the first year I was a movie critic - the year that Bonnie and Clyde didn't win.