My mother... she is beautiful, softened at the edges and tempered with a spine of steel. I want to grow old and be like her.

Everytime I look at a zebra, I can't figure out whether it's black with white stripes or white with black stripes, and that frustrates me.

Love is not a because, it's a no matter what.

The human capacity for burden is like bamboo- far more flexible than you'd ever believe at first glance.

There are two ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations.

There's always going to be bad stuff out there. But here's the amazing thing -- light trumps darkness, every time. You stick a candle into the dark, but you can't stick the dark into the light.

You can't look back - you just have to put the past behind you, and find something better in your future.

Until this moment, I had not realized that someone could break your heart twice, along the very same fault lines.

The wolves knew when it was time to stop looking for what they'd lost, to focus instead on what was yet to come.

If you have a sister and she dies, do you stop saying you have one? Or are you always a sister, even when the other half of the equation is gone?

‎Pick ten strangers and stick them in a room, and ask them which of us they feel sorrier for - you or me - and we all know who they'll choose.

Hope does not leave without being given permission.

When you blame others, you are affirming that you have no power, and your existence is only a reaction to the power of others.

I'm too old to recover, too narrow to forgive myself.

A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.

because we all know that the books we’ve loved best are seldom the ones we esteem the most highly

Love is not what we become but who we already are.

There are only two things to write about: life and death.

A certain amount of housekeeping also goes on in my poems. I wash doorknobs, do dishes, mop floors, patch carpets, cook.

The Degree to which I am blessed staggers me... the degree to which I take that for granted shames me. -Streetwalking with Jesus

Oracle, for example, has even hired people to dumpster dive for information about its competitor, Microsoft. It's not even illegal, because trash isn't covered by data secrecy laws.