She didn't know how to hate her mother yet, but every time she left her father crying in the airport she came that much closer to figuring it out.

The entire time Albie followed Beverly around the house doing what the children referred to as “the stripper soundtra

The two sisters were connected by neither love nor mutual affinity but by a very small bathroom that could be entered from the bedroom on either side.

Oh, my love, ' she said. 'What do the only children do?''We'll never have to know.

Bad habits were all a matter of perspective, and as long as the present was viewed through the lens of the past, anyone would say he was doing a spectacular job.

Zen- Dojo Tozan was not in Sarnen or Thu but somewhere between the two, not in a village but in the tall grass and blue flowers.

Isn't that what everyone wants, just for a moment to be unencumbered?

Somebody's going to have to make the money to buy you all those books.""They're free, " Franny said. "I check them out of the library.""Well, thank God for libraries, " Caroline said.

The broken spine of the book shows the webbing of binder's string, and my fingers have worn white spots in the cover.

That's all a man can hope for during his lifetime - to set an example - and when he is dead, to be an inspiration for history.

Sorrow happens, hardship happens, the hell with it, who never knew the price of happiness, will not be happy.

Doesn't expecting the unexpected make the unexpected expected?

We are all alone, trapped in these bodies and our own minds, and whatever company we have in this life is only fleeting and superficial.

The trouble with illusions is that you aren't aware you have any until they are taken away from you.

I'm a novelist at heart. How's that? And that's how I make my living, is I write novels.

He who desires anything but God deceives himself, and he who loves anything but God errs miserably.

It is important to make a dream of life and a dream reality.

The sexual revolution produced cultural convulsions that were unparalleled in the 20th century.