Money can buy the necessary police order. Justice is sold to the highest bidder

...the face has limited space. My mother used to say, if you fill your face with laughing, there will be no more room for crying.

Distance was a dangerous thing, she knew. Distance changed people.

Birth and death - what could be more monstrous than that? We like to deceive ourselves and call it wondrous and beautiful and majestic, but it's freakish, let's face it.

Remembering bred its own peculiar sorrow. It seemed so unfair: that time should render both sadness and happiness into a source of pain.

People forget how vulnerable they are despite their shirts and shoes and briefcases, how this hungry and cruel world could strip them, put them in the same position as my beggars.

How starved they seemed for ordinary kindness

The return of solitude was not quite as Dina expected it to be. These many years I made a virtue of inescapable reality, she thought, calling it peace and quiet.

Did life treat everyone so wantonly, ripping the good things to pieces while letting bad things fester and grow like fungus

the secret of survival was to balance hope and despair

Where was the line between compassion and foolishness, kindness and weakness? And that was from her position. From theirs, it might be a line between mercy and cruelty, consideration and callousness.

Who struggles can fail. Who doesn't struggle has already failed!

Gods are fragile things, they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense.

I know I'm bitter and a little jaded, and mildly enjoy it, but am I a sad person? Am I happy? I plan on being happy in the future for sure, but it isn't here yet. So what does that make me, exactly?

My wife says when I go out to the refrigerator, I do three minutes (entertaining) when the light goes on!

I always feel attacked when I'm asked about my painting.

For my life, I confess to you, feels to me today somewhat narrow and circumscribed.

Acedia is not in every dictionary; just in every heart.

[A]nd soon now we shall go out of the house and go into the convulsion of the world, out of history into history and the awful responsibility of Time.

Enjoying the least things - a chill glass of water, a moment of play with the cat, the sight of sunlight caught in the frost spangling the locust twigs - is a form of prayer.

One poll shows that by 61 percent to 29 percent Americans under 40 say that Social Security needs to be fixed.