Pain obliterates everything else. In pain, there is only the eternal present.

When Love cast me out, it was Cruelty who took pity upon me

There is no fulfillment that is not made sweeter for the prolonging of desire

To have a traitor for an ally is to have an enemy in waiting

Beauty is at its most poignant when the cold hand of Death holds poised to wither it imminently.

That which yields is not always weak.

Why is there ever this perverse cruelty in humankind, that makes us hurt most those we love best?

It's funny, how one can look back on a sorrow one thought one might well die of at the time, and know that one had not yet reckoned the tenth part of true grief.

All knowledge is worth having

The pain of the flesh is naught to that of the heart

And having once chosen, never to seek to return to the crossroads of that decision-for even if one chooses wrongly, the choice cannot be unmade.

why are we here?where do we come from?traditionally, these are questionsfor philosophy, but philosophy is dead

I am woman, hear me roar.

I had no tears to shed nor a prayer for the deceased... There is no hope for the hopeless.

I would employ the wise and strong of the empire, using righteousness to lead them. In this way, nothing is impossible.

Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne, In rayless majesty, now stretches forth Her leaden sceptre o'er a slumbering world.

One cat just leads to another." [Letter from Finca Vigia, Cuba, to his first wife, Elizabeth Hadley Richardson (1943).]

I'm not very happy idle. There's always this voice in my head that says, 'I should be writing.

I love food and I love my curves.

The importance of humility. We need the humility to know that truth can be ephemeral, that this can be but one version of the truth.

I lay there in my black slip dress and wondered if I ought to have worn pants. I mean, who knew what I was going to find up there? What if I had to do some climbing? People might see my underwear.