This time I felt my own face redden. Talking with this woman was like sitting still for a series of slaps, delivered arhythmically so you couldn't know when the next one was coming.

It was good to walk into a library again; it smelled like home.

The heart does not go backward. Only the mind.

When you handle books all day long, every new one is a friend and a temptation.

It was not the brutality of what occurred next that changed my mind and brought home to me the full meaning of fear. It was the brilliance of it.

The problem is simply finding the right person. Ask Plato. Just make sure she finishes your thoughts and you finish hers. That's all you need.

As you know, human history is full of evil deeds, and maybe we ought to think of them with tears, not fascination.

...History it seemed could be something entirely different a splash of blood whose agony didn't fade overnight or over centuries.

It's funny; in this era of e-mail and voice mail and all those things that even I did not grow up with, a plain old paper letter takes on amazing intimacy.

There is nothing harder, at moments, than talking to someone who has all the power of silence.

...what will we someday do, I always wonder, without the pleasures of turning through books and stumbling on things we never meant to find?

The future is now! Don't make that second pass you into regrets.

And Fall, with her yeller harvest moon and the hills growin' brown and golden under a sinkin' sun.

I think when you've travelled around a lot in Africa, you understand something that many people here don't recognize: the extraordinary power that is Africa at village level - at community level.

Time is the best killer.

The dead don't bother with particulars.

The words ending in Ique do mocke the Physician (as Hectique, Paralitique, Apoplectique, Lethargique).

I will always stand firm to protect the sanctity of marriage. I believe it is important to work with people to find common ground on difficult issues.

I want to take some of the ideas that worked when my husband was president, and we ended up with 23 million new jobs and incomes went up for everybody.

We need to go inward instead of outward, and learn to trust our own inner guide, preserving our identity and finding the answers from within.

Can't believe the number of tracks I get sent every day now. Everyone is at it! There's no way you can keep up and I have two A&R guys!