Only that once again they broke the Love Laws. That lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much.

That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.

If you're happy in a dream, does that count?

This was the trouble with families. Like invidious doctors, they knew just where it hurt.

Flat muscled and honey coloured. Sea secrets in his eyes. A silver raindrop in his ear.

When she listened to songs that she loved on the radio, something stirred inside her. A liquid ache spread under her skin, and she walked out of the world like a witch.

His gratitude widened his smile and bent his back.

He could do only one thing at a time. If he held her, he couldn't kiss her. If he kissed her, he couldn't see her. If he saw her, he couldn't feel her.

Heaven opened and the water hammered down, reviving the reluctant old well, greenmossing the pigless pigsty, carpet bombing still, tea-colored puddles the way memory bombs still, tea-colored minds.

Her collarbones like wings that spread from the base of her throat to the ends of her shoulders. A bird held down by skin.

To understand history, ' Chacko said, 'we have to go inside and listen to what they're saying. And look at the books and the pictures on the wall. And smell the smells.

If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn't love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

I refuse to spend my life worrying about what I eat. There is no pleasure worth forgoing just for an extra three years in the geriatric ward.

If, in [Federal Housing Administration] application, black folks were excluded from it, then you have to override that by going after those discriminatory practices.

I practice at home, in between phone calls, and have much to do.

... it is a fundamental principle of testing that you must know in advance the answer each test case is supposed to produce. If you don't, you are not testing; you are experimenting.

Winning peace means the triumph of our pledge to establish, on a democratic basis, a new social framework of tolerance and generosity from which no one will feel excluded.

When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion.

Conscience is our magnetic compass; reason our chart.

If somebody's not prepared to answer the question, you can keep asking

There is one voyage, the first, the last, the only one.