So this is where the years of maturity deliver us - to this needy, selfish, unwieldy wish to be somebody else's first and primal other.

This is why I read novels: so I can escape my own unrelenting monologue.

Write the book you want to read, the one you cannot find.

Open a book this minute and start reading. Don’t move until you’ve reached page fifty. Until you’ve buried your thoughts in print. Cover yourself with words. Wash yourself away. Dissolve.

Go for long walks, indulge in hot baths, Question your assumptions, be kind to yourself, live for the moment, loosen up, scream, curse the world, count your blessings, Just let go, Just be.

There are chapters in every life which are seldom read and certainly not aloud.

Bookish people, who are often maladroit people, persist in thinking they can master any subtlety so long as it's been shaped into acceptable expository prose.

nothing she did or said was quite what she meant but still her life could be called a monument shaped in a slant of available light and set to the movement of possible music

Anyone's childhood can be an act of disablement if rehearsed and replayed and squinted at in a certain light. . .

Words are our life. We are human because we use language. So I think we are less human when we use less language.

The scolding voice is her own, so abrasive and quick, yet so powerless to move her.

We were motivated by our mentors to go an extra mile.

There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.

Finding one's voice - or creating a narrative voice that has the power to carry your story - is the hardest part.

Any desire to grow is following the flow of love

Democracy is not what we have. It is what we do.

Just want to set the record straight. I'm single and I'm not going to get married!

The real attitude of sin in the heart towards God is that of being without God; it is pride, the worship of myself, that is the great atheistic fact in human life.

Die human, DIE!! Die nasty polluting person!!!!' yelled Grover. I turned him so he faced me. He kept on clicking his plastic gun towards me as if I was part of the game.

If you are serious about changing your life, you are going to have to get into the Bible. You need to read it, study it, memorize it, meditate on it, and apply it.

I don't feel like I'm running against them, I feel like I'm running to try to show the American people what I can do and what I can accomplish.