Strength just comes in one brand - you. Stand up at sunrise and meet what they send you and keep your hair combed

Southerners ask intimate questions in the way monkeys groom each other for lice, not to pry but to make you feel cared for.

The only thing more destructive than a tornado is a family.

Stand up at sunrise and meet what they send you.

What I still ask for daily-for life as long as I have work to do, and work as long as I have life.

Life is short and often stingy; feast the heart with what it craves, short of cruelty, and let the world wonder.

The sound of story is the dominant sound of our lives.

Cities are the least permanent things in our civilization.

As a child I thought it was very boring when I had to sit with [my mother] on the city streets, but the time sank deep and surfaced later.

Writing is a fearsome but grand vocation—potentially healing but likewise deadly. I wouldn’t trade my life for the world.

The death of every art form seems imminent at least once in every century; but while the very funeral arrangements go forward, some child is born who is Michelangelo, Picasso, Yeats.

Actions speak louder than words, and a smile says, ‘I like you. You make me happy. I am glad to see you.

Concentrated power is bad""(name of chapter)

Never above you. Never below you. Always beside you.

Wherever there is animal worship, there is human sacrifice.

I try to create work that doesn't make viewers feel they're being spoken down to, so they feel open participation.

Mid-grade readers don't have short attention spans, they just have low boredom tolerance.

I can't tell my future, so I'm going to tell my past.

I lost my public self, or had it stolen. In a way, it was a form of identity theft.

Prayers were held in Assembly Hall. We all perched in rows on wooden benches while teachers sat up on the platform in armchairs, facing us.

Oh, love. Love is best of all. There is no such total element, not even pain. Who has ever loved, knows this. I need not say more.