We can often endure an extra pound of pain far more easily than we can suffer the withdrawal of an ounce of accustomed pleasure.

The time to relax is when you don't have time for it.

The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.

Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better.

When I hear somebody sigh, 'Life is hard,' I am always tempted to ask, 'Compared to what?'

Happiness is a direction, not a place.

History repeats itself, but in such cunning disguise that we never detect the resemblance until the damage is done.

The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, 'I was wrong'.

There's no point in burying a hatchet if you're going to put up a marker on the site.

Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.

The two words 'information' and 'communication' are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out; communication is getting through.

One day we both are going to realize that our Friendship was worth the fight.

A gourmet is just a glutton with brains.

I argued that the Bush administration, and the Coalition officials more recently, didn't understand Iraqi society. They thought it was a blank slate, that they could use Iraqis as guinea pigs.

Great determination can overcome most odds.

Just because we didn't work out as a couple didn't mean we couldn't work together, right?

No one knows the colour of a flower till it is broken.

People have obsessions and fears and passions which they don't admit to. I think every character is interesting and has extremes. It's the novelist privilege to see how odd everyone is.

It feels good to know that I am safe and I am loved.

At present I answer about 100 letters a month, and read 300 emails.

To me it's a question of being able to look backward and give the present a root... To give meaning to where we are today, we need to look at where we have come from.