The one thing that I always got positive reinforcement for from teachers, who really changed my life, was the written word.

The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.

I would be the most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.

A finished person is a boring person.

There is a little boy inside the man who is my brother... Oh, how I hated that little boy. And how I love him too.

After all those years as a woman hearing 'not thin enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough, not this enough, not that enough,' almost overnight I woke up one morning and thought, 'I'm enough.'

Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.

There is a lot of talk now about metal detectors and gun control. Both are good things. But they are no more a solution than forks and spoons are a solution to world hunger.

Look back, to slavery, to suffrage, to integration and one thing is clear. Fashions in bigotry come and go. The right thing lasts.

You are the only person alive who has sole custody of your life ... Your entire life ... Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank account, but your soul.

America is a country that seems forever to be toddler or teenager, at those two stages of human development characterized by conflict between autonomy and security.

Greg starts a middle school and asks: Whyis "bullies" such a big PROBLEM? And sayspeople need to shave twice a day.

Suffering has a noble purpose.

Be true to yourself and don't live your life according to other people's dreams and wants.

Libraries are full of ghosts, books being the most haunted things of all.

I really can't complain about actresses who get paid to be dumb. Most of us can't get paid to be smart.

Life is judged with all the blindness of life itself.

I'm still shocked every time I see snow. The first bit of snow each year... I stay up and I watch it. And then I go out and pick it up and eat it and move around in it.

I'm doing mental training as well. So, you know, body, mind, and spirit - everything is being addressed, every single day. Generally I'll have three training sessions a day.

I love Westerns. I really love John Wayne. Frank Capra, any of his movies I love.

The loudest noise in the world is silence.