Soon would come the night in which there was no more work – not the work of the hands, nor the work of the mind, nor the work of the heart.

Was there anything quite so painful, so fraught with the possibilities of hurt, as gift giving within a family?

Still, for all that, her life had lacked passion. The demons had never come for her.

Education teaches children to lose interest in what matters most to them.

Just because you pretend the universe doesn't have teeth doesn't mean you won't get eaten in the end.

The body was an organic machine, period, and God was a figment of its fitful imagination.

But men are such strange creatures, really. I think most of them would rather we weren’t around at all, so they could just spend time mooning over each other. Hero worship and all that stuff.

The past is the past. It’s the present we should worry about.

It was a failure of pedagogical nerve, she reminded herself, to give up on a student.

All desire, Tracy had had occasion since to think, is to some degree monstrous.

I’m talking about other kinds of hunger. Desire.

With out art, without communicating, we wouldn't live beyond 30 because we'd be so sad and depressed.

I know my children will never have to say, 'Mom died of ovarian cancer.'

For me to stay healthy in a relationship, the individuals have to nurture themselves

There's still so much more to do. I can't sit back and be complacent, and none of us should be. I get around now in a wheelchair, but I get around.

For a moment of night we have a glimpse of ourselves and of our world islanded in a stream of stars - pilgrims of mortality, voyaging between horizons across the eternal seas of space and time.

Lie detection is like language; there is a learning window. Telling whoppers to small children seems to be a family tradition in many families.

Because you do not believe?" "Oh, no," said Attolia bitterly. "Because I believe and do not choose to worship.

I wasn't a very good illustrator so I became a designer.

Switch clicking off in my head, turning the hot light off and the cool night on and — [He looks up, smiling sadly.] — all of a sudden there's—peace!

Disclaimer: If anyone disagrees with anything I say, I am quite prepared to not only retract it, but also to deny under oath I ever said it.