The secret is that there is no secret.

You can call it innocence, or you can call it gullibility, but Celia made the most common mistake of the good-hearted: she assumed that everyone else was just like her.

In a country that doesn't discriminate between fame and infamy, the latter presents itself as plainly more achievable.

Time itself made all things rare.

Funny how the nature of a normal day is the first memory to fade.

Not that happiness is dull. Only that it doesn't tell well. And of our consuming diversions as we age is to recite, not only to others but to ourselves, our own story.

...whenever a woman describes a man as sweet, the dalliance is doomed.

Though surely to avoid attachments for fear of loss is to avoid life.

I thought at the time that I couldn't be horrified anymore, or wounded. I suppose that's a common conceit, that you've already been so damaged that damage itself, in its totality, makes you safe.

I was mortified by the prospect of becoming hopelessly trapped in someone else's story.

My mind is huge with little stories that I never told you.

There are many little ways to enlarge your child’s world. Love of books is the best of all.

...and I was afraid because I knew I had outgrown my past before I could see a path to my future.

You think you know me, but I'm not sure that even I know who I am anymore.

God prunes us when He is about to take us into a new season of growth and expansion.

If I improve just a little bit every day, I'm a happier person

Joyously participate in the sorrows of others.

I would take songs that I'd loved as a child and redo them in my mind for the new voice I had, the low voice.

Faith is the inborn capacity to see God behind everything.

Despair is your friend in show business. I don't believe you can act if happiness is your lot. It's the ups that keep you living and the downs that mete out talent.

[Allen] Ginsberg totally helped that out. He was the best sales person. He was the most pop. They are still shocking and relevant, especially [William] Burroughs.