Pain and suffering are the soil of strength and courage.

Nobody gets to pick their time to die, but living every day to the max is something we all get to do.

None of us truly knows what we'll do when the circumstances become so overwhelming and complex that we can't even tell right from wrong.

For as long as the world spins and the earth is green with new wood, she will lie in this box and not in my arms.

You don't know me, but I know about you...I can't make you live longer. I can't stop you from hurting. But I can give you one wish, as someone did for me.

Who wants to be used? I love to read, so books are my main friends. They're always available, always friendly, and always interesting, and they never make me choose sides.

If I can't wait for you at the end of an aisle on your wedding day, I'll wait for you in heaven.

I wanted to write about the third world and had the opportunity to go live in the trenches, so to speak.

I am very privileged and honored when someone chooses to read a book, especially a book of mine.

But they can't know how the dark space inside me is growing. I lie to them. I can't get out of the dark hole. 'Peace is here' it whispers.

So this is always the key: you have to write the book you love, the book that's alive in your heart. That's the one you have to write.

There is a proverbial saying chiefly concerned with warning against too closely calculating the numerical value of un-hatched chicks.

I believe that to be a free woman is to be both passionate and intelligent

It's a queer business, making oneself blind.

You're lucky I'm drawn to things that are sick and weird. Makes it so I can actually still like you.

Nothing tends so much to the advancement of knowledge as the application of a new instrument.

For me, there's a big difference between having a baby in your 20s and having a baby in your 40s.

We never consider that the things dogs know about us are things of which we have not the faintest notion.

George Jones is a national treasure and should be treated accordingly. A unique style so often emulated even inadvertently.

When riches begin to come they come so quickly, in such great abundance, that one wonders where they have been hiding during all those lean years.

But even if I'm left high and dry at the end of this wild journey, just taking it is a great feeling.