People’s lives, in Jubilee as elsewhere, were dull, simple, amazing, and unfathomable – deep caves paved with kitchen linoleum.

You cannot let your parents anywhere near your real humiliations.

The complexity of things - the things within things - just seems to be endless. I mean nothing is easy, nothing is simple.

Always remember that when a man goes out of the room, he leaves everything in it behind. When a woman goes out she carries everything that happened in the room along with her.

I would really hope this would make people see the short story as an important art, not just something you played around with until you got a novel.

The conversation of kisses. Subtle, engrossing, fearless, transforming.

In your life there are a few places, or maybe only the one place, where something happened, and then there are all the other places.

We say of some things that they can't be forgiven, or that we will never forgive ourselves. But we do-we do it all the time.

My head was a magpie's nest lined with such bright scraps of information.

Love removes the world for you, and just as surely when it's going well as when it's going badly.

Life would be grand if it weren't for the people.

The way you live your day is a sentence in the story of your life. Each day you make the choice whether the sentence ends with a period, question mark, or exclamation point.

What magic is this?' the muse says to the man. 'A flower, a dream, a fairy-tale wish, ' the man says to his muse. The muse smiles.

You can understand my inner reactionsmore clearly than me because you can see me as a whole.

On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does.

Words are like untying a corset - you can move into this great space with them.

If I can raise attention to a cause, I will.

Immigrants in Norway must learn Norwegian. The same should Spaniards in Spain do, if they want to work with Norwegians.

People you don't like are pigheaded. Your friends are stubborn, or hold to their purpose.

California is now close to spending more on prisons than it does on higher education - surely the death warrant of a civilization.

May the Lord bless the family and strengthen it in this moment of crisis