She lifts a bowl of kheer and her thoughts, flittering like dusty sparrows in a brown back alley, turn a sudden kingfisher blue.

Each spice has a special day to it. For turmeric it is Sunday, when light drips fat and butter-colored into the bins to be soaked up glowing, when you pray to the nine planets for love and luck.

Each day has a color, a smell.

How can I forgive if you are not ready to give up that which caused you to stumble?

Monday is the day of silence, day of the whole white mung bean, which is sacred to the moon.

Fenugreek, Tuesday's spice, when the air is green like mosses after rain.

Fennel, which is the spice for Wednesdays, the day of averages, of middle-aged people. . . . Fennel . . . smelling of changes to come.

Before the first before and after the last after, there is night waiting.

Life has taught me to think, but thinking has not taught me to live.

I believe in keeping guns out of our inner cities, and that our leaders must say so in the face of the gun manufacturer's lobby.

The hardest thing about being famous? Just working I guess. Just work. The famous part's the luxury.

Satan stations more devils on monastery walls than in the dens of iniquity, for the latter offer no resistance.

You speak your mind, don't you...? A rare find in a woman.

We are looking forward to Donald Trump releasing his medical information. Just making sure everybody is meeting at the same bar here.

We live in an age of artificial scarcity, maintained by ignorance and fear.

I'm just living my life, and I'm not gonna live my life for other people.

No man will ever unfold the capacities of his own intellect who does not at least checker his life with solitude.