Still, they have one thing I envy. Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die.

A snowball in the face is surely the perfect beginning to a lasting friendship.

Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day.

If only she could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it for laughter.

Often I wish this would all be over, Liesel, but then somehow you do something like walk down the basement steps with a snowman in your hands.

I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.

I guess humans like to watch a little destruction. Sand castles, houses of cards, that's where they begin. Their great skills is their capacity to escalate.

No matter how many times she was told that she was loved, there was no recognition that the proof was in the abandonment.

It was the beginning of the greatest Christmas ever. Little food. No presents. But there was a snowman in their basement.

As always, one of her books was next to her.

If you can't imagine it, think clumsy silence. Think bits and pieces of floating despair. And drowning in a train.

That which you love most will then become both your strength and your weakness.

All I cared about that summer were suntans, beaches, boys and booze.

Many people suffer from the fear of finding oneself alone, and so they don't find themselves at all.

Among the American contemporaries I read with most enjoyment are several North Carolinians. I think the best poetry being written these days is being written by Southerners.

Testimony should be a philosophical problem and not limited to legal or historical contexts where it refers to the account of a witness who reports what he has seen.

We can do noble acts without ruling the earth and sea.

Content is not the pathway to great deeds.

I only like to write shows that I feel like no one has seen before.

It wasn't that I was shy to go out with him, I just didn't want people with preconceived notions to assume anything about why we were together. I was pretty careful for a while.

Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.