She has the gift of accepting her life.

That's what books are for... to travel without moving an inch.

Fiction is the only way I know a human being can inhabit the mind of another human being.

Pack a pillow and blanket and see as much of the world as you can.You will not regret it.

I am drawn to any story that makes me want to read from one sentence to the next. I have no other criterion.

A bicultural upbringing is a rich but imperfect thing

Pet names are a persistant remnant of childhood, a reminder that life is not always so serious, so formal, so complicated. They are a reminder, too, that one is not all things to all people.

Somehow, bad news, however ridden with static, however filled with echoes, always manages to be conveyed.

The first sentence of a book is a handshake, perhaps an embrace.

That the last two letters in her name were the first two in his, a silly thing he never mentioned to her but caused him to believe that they were bound together.

It didn't matter that I wore clothes from Sears; I was still different. I looked different. My name was different. I wanted to pull away from the things that marked my parents as being different.

Sarcasm is waster on the young.

I heard a rumor that your mom and dad ran away from home.

Libertarians should say, 'I love this country too much to take away votes from the Republican'

I've always been a fine artist.

The fact is I am growing old too fast, alas! I feel it, and yet work I will, and may God grant me life to see the last plate of my mammoth work finished.

When a man says he does not want to speak of something he usually means he can think of nothing else.

Which is the most universal human characteristic: fear, or laziness?

We have to change this whole earth into a tremendous festival, and it is possible because man brings all that is needed to transform this earth into a paradise.

When you walk 10 hours, 11 hours a day by yourself, you are doing a walking meditation.

In Africa you have space...there a profound sense of space here, space and sky