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

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

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.

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.

And now the bride begins to move. Little mechanical doll, clinging to her husband’s arm, climbing into the carriage. Her white silk stocking, her elegant shoe.

I want to weep too, not for me but for us all--for rich or poor, educated or illiterate, here we are finally reduced to a sameness in this sisterhood of deprivation.

Only recently has part of America challenged the long-held assumption that America is a Christian nation. Most citizens do not recognize just how quickly we have moved in an anti-Christian direction.

Material success is not something that will bind you, unless you become attached to it, any more than poverty will liberate you.

I want a Supreme Court that doesn't always side with corporate interests.

For a truly religious man nothing is tragic.

Most people say I look mean, and because I play so many tough roles and because of my size and my martial arts background, they think I am, but I'm really not.

I've split my life between a few different disciplines.

It is a characteristic of the human mind to hate the man one has injured.

I don't think people are interested in my personal life. I've never had a Hollywood life. I've always been a worker.