We know the meaning of nothing but the words we use to describe it.

She wanted to hold foreign syllables like mints on her tongue until they dissolved into fluency.

We wear clothes, and speak, and create civilizations, and believe we are more than wolves. But inside us there is a word we cannot pronounce and that is who we are.

She wouldn't climb out of the bed for her sister, but she had climbed into a crater. She wouldn't cross a room, but she had crossed a continent.

Nothing, she now knew, could be defined in exclusion, and every bug, pencil, and grass blade was a dictionary in itself, requiring the definitions of all things to fulfill its own.

Then Brezhnev grabbed the wheel of power and captained the country with the exploratory heart of a municipal bus driver.

No one can take what's inside your head once it's there.

You will have the last word.' 'Your name will be that word.

She felt as buoyantly patriotic as her Chechen classmates who could trace their family trees back to the acorns

Her mother stared in quiet awe of this more artful rearrangement of her genetic code, and slipped into a contentedness that usually appeared only after the red wine had fallen below the bottle label.

Time became more important the closer to death one was, so an extra few hours to make peace with the world were worth more than years.

With endless possibilities, every morning the sunrises.

My all-time favorite interception was picking off Peyton Manning back in 2007, the one-hander down the sideline.

Jokes that make me laugh out loud when I write them almost always bomb. I have no idea why.

The thing you love right away, don't do it, because that's the very thing that's going to be your addiction for the rest of your life.

In their sympathies, children feel nearer animals than adults

I'm a comedian, which is the opposite of a lifestyle that equips you to be a parent.

Get to part B, Daniel. Think fast. Patience is a virtue, and you know how Cam feels about those.

Libraries have always been there for me. Of course I'll stand up for them!

Crossing barriers can be as simple as a smile.

Nature admits no lie.