The bad thing about small-town life is that everybody knows your business...I suppose that is my central obsession. What we owe to society, what we owe to ourselves.

Hope is a renewable option: If you run out of it at the end of the day, you get to start over in the morning.

If you want sweet dreams, you've got to live a sweet life.

Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can't even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain.

Finally, cooking is good citizenship. It's the only way to get serious about putting locally raised foods into your diet, which keeps farmlands healthy and grocery money in the neighborhood.

We came from Bethlehem, Georgia bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes into the jungle.

Maybe life doesn't get any better than this, or any worse, and what we get is just what we're willing to find: small wonders, where they grow.

Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say.

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.

It's what you do that makes your soul.

Pain reaches the heart with electrical speed, but truth moves to the heart as slowly as a glacier.

Words have power.

Every question may be considered the beginning, the prerequisite of the search for knowledge. Every answer may be considered the fruition of a question.

Undertake not what you cannot perform but be careful to keep your promise.

'Brookline' was a very small film and it was only here for a very short time and I wasn't able to catch it.

If we wait until we're ready, we'll be waiting for the rest of our lives.

When the drama of history is over, Jesus Christ will stand alone on the stage. All the great figures of history ... will realize that they have been but actors in a drama produced by another.

It is good for us to keep some account of our prayers, that we may not unsay them in our practice.

you have to be very careful when you give to others that you don't tell them how great you are rather than how much you value them.

I concentrated hard and snapped my fingers. "You don't see the sword," I told the girl. "It's just a ballpoint pen." She blinked. "Um . . . no. It's a sword, weirdo.

And poets, in my view, and I think the view of most people, do speak God's language - it's better, it's finer, it's language on a higher plane than ordinary people speak in their daily lives.