They only asked for punishments that fitted their crimes. Not ones that came like cupboards with built-in bedrooms. Not ones you spent your whole life in, wandering through its maze of shelves.

That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.

If you're happy in a dream, does that count?

This was the trouble with families. Like invidious doctors, they knew just where it hurt.

Flat muscled and honey coloured. Sea secrets in his eyes. A silver raindrop in his ear.

When she listened to songs that she loved on the radio, something stirred inside her. A liquid ache spread under her skin, and she walked out of the world like a witch.

His gratitude widened his smile and bent his back.

He could do only one thing at a time. If he held her, he couldn't kiss her. If he kissed her, he couldn't see her. If he saw her, he couldn't feel her.

Heaven opened and the water hammered down, reviving the reluctant old well, greenmossing the pigless pigsty, carpet bombing still, tea-colored puddles the way memory bombs still, tea-colored minds.

Her collarbones like wings that spread from the base of her throat to the ends of her shoulders. A bird held down by skin.

To understand history, ' Chacko said, 'we have to go inside and listen to what they're saying. And look at the books and the pictures on the wall. And smell the smells.

In these last days, what the world really needs is courageous parenting from mothers and fathers who are not afraid to speak up and take a stand.

Consider how blessed you are to have the things you do in life.

Thoughts are circular, they don't take you anywhere. They don't have feet-they can't gain any ground. They can trap you if you don't eventually stand up and make a move.

We have too many high-sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.

In a free government the demand for moral qualities should be made superior to that of talents.

If you do something that's really original, you discover why everybody else does it the other way, usually. There's a reason cliches exist, 'cause they work.

There isn't anybody that looks like me without clothes on.

I grew up on movie sets, getting to see storytelling happen up close.

At the time the Sendmail program had a very poor reputation with respect to security, with four root vulnerabilities per year for two successive years.

Nobody who's ever been to Gulag is a pacifist.