We don't do ambivalence well in America. We do courage of our convictions. We do might makes right. Ambivalence is French. Certainty is American.

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.

Cruelty had been his weapon. But such a tool is dangerous and can spread further than you intend.

An error of the passions is not the flowering of a great love, and merely the beauty of the human form is not capable of inspiring an eternity of mad attachment.

God hardening Pharaoh’s heart causes the world to fear God and not think they can sin to the point at which they want to repent.

School life is like being on a monkey mountain...monkeys in the same gang constantly fight and get back together again...and a hierarchy gets established.

Small projects need much more help than great.

falsehood is not more unjustifiable than unsafe.

We're the most captive nation of slaves that ever came along. The moral timidity of the average American is quite noticeable. Everybody's afraid to be thought in any way different from everyone else.

It was always assumed that I would go to college.

A lady is a woman who makes a man behave like a gentleman.

Each generation takes a special pleasure in removing the household gods of its parents from their pedestals, and consigning them to the cupboard.