Six books… my mother didn’t want books falling into my hands. It never occurred to her that I fell into the books – that I put myself inside them for safe keeping.

Why is the measure of love loss?

Yes, the stories are dangerous, she was right. A book is a magic carpet that flies you off elsewhere. A book is a door. You open it. You step through. Do you come back?

...there are two kinds of writing: the one you write and the one that writes you.

Part fact part fiction is what life is. And it is always a cover story. I wrote my way out.

Sometimes you have to live in precarious and temporary places. Unsuitable places. Wrong places. Sometimes the safe place won't help you.

Where you are born--what you are born into, the place, the history of the place, how that history mates with your own-- stamps who you are, whatever the pundits of globalisation have to say.

Memory loss is one way of coping with damage.

To tell someone not to be emotional is to tell them to be dead.

We bury things so deep we no longer remember there was anything to bury. Our bodies remember. Our neurotic states remember. But we don't.

Unconditional love is what a child should expect from a parent even though it rarely works out that way.

Self love is number one. As you radiate it out to others

The meaning of life consists in the fact that it makes no sense to say that life has no meaning.

Love is not consolation. It is light.

By this means the government may secretly and unobserved, confiscate the wealth of the people, and not one man in a million will detect the theft.

Morale is the greatest single factor in successful wars.

Rationalism is the enemy of art, though necessary as a basis for architecture.

There are no circumstances, however unfortunate, that clever people do not extract some advantage from.

It's hard to get ivory in Africa, but in Alabama the Tuscaloosa

Although he may not be human, it’s good that Messi still thinks he is.

Your ideal body weight as an ectomorph at 6' 0" will be 214.378 lbs. There. Happy? And if you lose or gain a pound, I will have you killed. It is important to be ideal.