Was it harder to die, or harder to be the one who survived?

I leapt eagerly into books. The characters’ lives were so much more interesting than the lonely heartbeat of my own.

I felt as if I were riding a pendulum. Just as I would swing into the abyss of hopelessness, the pendulum would swing back with some small goodness.

Sometimes there is such beauty in awkwardness.

Andrius, I'm...scared." He stopped and turned to me. "No. Don't be scared. Don't give them anything Lina, not even your fear.

He threw his burning cigarette onto our clean living room floor and ground it into the wood with his boot. We were about to become cigarettes.

Whether love of friend, love of country, love of God, or even love of enemy—love reveals to us the truly miraculous nature of the human spirit.

Decisions, they shape our destiny.

A wrongdoing doesn't give us the right to do wrong.

Some things just won’t go away, no matter how hard you scrub.

What do you do with all this bank, Josie? Be a lot easier if you just lifted your skirt.” “The only reason I’d lift my skirt is to pull out my pistol and plug you in the head.

Big things in the glory of the world mean nothing. Small things in glory of God mean everything. Truly..., size doesn't matter in this world or in the world to come.

People forget history nowadays, he lamented, that is what the ego does, making one the prisoner of one's inflated present, ignoring the humble past one has lived.

My future was a blank slate and only I could write on it.

Ask her what she craved, and she'd get a little frantic about things like books, the woods, music. Plants and the seasons. Also freedom.

I believe my business and non-profit investments are much more beneficial to societal well-being than sending more money to Washington.

I do feel very American. I think it's something I'm proud of and proud to be by chance born here. Honestly, that's something I think about.

Censors are necessary, increasingly necessary, if America is to avoid having a vital literature.

I'm writing mostly to thank you for living you eighty years and to tell you I love you and think of you often.

Almost everyone's instinct is to be overconfident and read way too much into a hot or cold streak.

One's whole being vibrates like strings brushed by an invisible wind.