There is something so settled and stodgy about turning a great romance into next of kin on an emergency room form, and something so soothing and special, too.

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.

Consume life before it spoils.

The third petition of the Lord's Prayer is repeated daily by millions who have not the slightest intention of letting anyone's will be done but their own.

In order to keep surfing (getting-a-job avoidance) we just automatically got into hashish smuggling. Didn't even occur to us that something bad might happen.

Well, my definition of a tragedy is a clash between right and right.

Old men go to Death, Death comes to Young men.

Love came when you weren't looking, except in the case of millions who found mates on Match.com, but, hey. It sounded good.

Actually, all I ever wanted to be was the best in my field.

There's going to be a time when MS-13 fires an RPG into an Alexandria [Va.] police car, and [Americans] are going to say, 'What the hell happened?'

Sending grown-ups up the wall is one of the things adolescence is all about. A few years ago it was done with rock 'n' roll music. Now at least they can do it quietly with a home computer.

Sometimes, kismet happens.