The police, finding a corpse with twenty-eight stab wounds in a bathtub, suspected foul play.

This is one reason people need to believe in God—because we want someone to know us, truly, all the way through, even the worst of us.

Often you don’t know whether you’re the hero of a romantic comedy or the villain on a Lifetime special until the restraining order arrives.

I wish I could recommend the experience of not being killed to everyone.

People are most vociferously opposed to those forces they have to resist more fiercely within themselves.

Let me propose that if your beliefs or convictions matter more to you than people—if they require you to act as though you were a worse person than you are—you may have lost perspective.

If you manage to make it to some semblance of adulthood, just showing up turns out to be one of the kindest, most selfless things you can do for someone.

What dooms our best efforts to cultivate empathy and compassion is always, of course, other people.

The truth is, there are not two kinds of people. There's only one: the kind that loves to divide up into gangs who hate each other's guts.

Let me propose that if your beliefs or convictions matter more to you than people - if they require you to act as though you were a worse person than you are - you may have lost perspective.

It’s easy to demonstrate how progressive and open-minded and loyal you are when it costs you nothing.

For the briefest moment, Jack's face formed the faintest smile as he considered fear and anxiety, the latter two of which often caused people to forget what truly mattered most.

She didn't tell him white folks couldn't love the same as coloreds. She couldn't love the same neither though, cuz more than half of her was white.

THOMASINA:But then the Egyptian noodle made carnal embrace with the enemy who burned the great library of Alexandria without so much as a fine for all that is overdue!

Kids and violent TV, violent TV and violence, violence and kids. The only people missing from this discussion are the parents. Where are we? Gone. Abdicated.

Loneliness, tenderness, high society, notoriety, you fight for the throne and you travel alone.

Rule by patience, Laughing Water!

I'm a woman who wants her chocolate.

The work is constant. There's a time for rest, but I don't believe in getting comfortable just because everyone says you've arrived.

The great advantage to labor arising out of co-operative effort has been apparent to me for many years.

The soul is never perfectly secure from the influence of passion; the occasional tranquility she seems to enjoy, is rather relaxation than imperturbable triumph.