Quite possibly there's nothing as fine as a big freight train starting across country in early summer, Hardesty thought. That's when you learn that the tragedy of plants is that they have roots.

The shelf was filled with books that were hard to read, that could devastate and remake one's soul, and that, when they were finished, had a kick like a mule.

There is justice in the world, Peter Lake, but it cannot be had without mystery.

their powerlessness, innocence, and imagination fused to enable them to turn time inside out, travel on the wind, and enter the souls of animals.

Justice came from a fight amid complexities, and required all the virtues in the world merely to be perceived.

The beauty of truth is that it need not be proclaimed or believed. It skips from soul to soul, changing form each time it touches, but it is what it is, I have seen it, and someday you will, too.

Small scenes can be so beautiful that they change a man forever.

Physical features count little unless they are illumined from within.

For the first time in his life, he felt exactly what he was, and he was not impressed.

She felt as if she knew the stars, and had been among them, or would be.

At least until there are new lakes in the clouds that open upon living cities as yet unknown, and perhaps forever, that is a question which you must answer within your own heart.

Stories are like islands, go out exploring and you're bound to get lost fantastically.

Our memories have voices, too. Often sad ones that clamor like raised arms in the dark.

Nostalgia is the only friend that stays with you forever.

He who lies artistically, treads closer to the truth than ever he knows.

A brick can be used to represent the zero probability of this book being any good.

Change is no modern invention. It is as old as time and as unlikely to disappear. It has always to be counted on as of the essence of human experience.

We are a great nation, which has lot to offer to the world, but to offer something to the world France has to remain France.

I listen to the far left which informs the far right. Somewhere in the middle is where we end up.

I grew up, as reported, in a large family of Catholics without even a decent ration of tentativeness among the lot of us about our religious faith.

I introduced myself to Scorsese and I said, "If you need someone to do craft services, I'm there."