The philosopher Elaine Scarry has observed that "beauty always takes place in the particular." Cruelty, on the other hand, prefers abstraction.

If the thrill of hunting were in the hunt, or even in the marksmanship, a camera would do just as well.

You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.

Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.

The sky slowly pulled up its blue dress to reveal night.

The more you love someone, he came to think, the harder it is to tell them. It surprised him that strangers didn't stop each other on the street to say I love you.

His voice was handsome and broken, like a cobblestone street.

To feel alone is to be alone.

Words are capable of making experience more vivid, and also of organizing it. They can scare us, and they can comfort us.

When we eat factory-farmed meat we live, literally, on tortured flesh. Increasingly, that tortured flesh is becoming our own.

It has shown me that everything is illuminated in the light of the past. It is always along the side of us...on the inside, looking out.

What had happened still seemed implausible. A person was present your entire life, and then one day she disappeared and never came back. It resisted belief.

The key to good writing is to leave Boo Radley in the house until the end of the story.

Sadness is no more than a bit of acid transfixed in the cerebellum.

How can I be of the greatest service doing that which I most enjoy doing?

I take toleration to be a part of religion. I do not know which I would sacrifice; I would keep them both: it is not necessary that I should sacrifice either.

As Americans we've gotta make sure that we begin to rebuild and get our military the resources they need to defend us.

Something smells fishy and they say it's you, all I know is that you made it with the whole damn crew.

When I'm singing, it's like I'm at home. And music is a great healer. I think I'd have been a basket case if I hadn't been a singer.

What I have learned in my life and work is that the more I am able to be myself, the more it enables other people to be themselves.

In the absence of good scientific data about the effects of artificial hallucinogens it's good to stick to the natural ones.