Wealth announces itself with what's easy to break and impossible to clean. The chairs were all curvy works of art that turned sitting into yoga exercises.

And in the middle of the lake the woman I'd spoken with floated on her back, eyes closed, as if nothing in her many years had ever gone wrong.

The future is the lie with which we justify the brutality of the present.

Never forget the first three letters of confidence.

The stomach is not the only vital organ that hungers.

Endurance, I reminded myself, is the true measure of existence.

In order to become the chisel that breaks the marble inside us, the artist must first become the hammer." [Soviet censor of paintings and photos]

There are so many paths to contentment if you're open to self-delusion.

A single whisper can be quite a disturbance when the rest of the audience is silent.

We are still living with the ideology of compromise, not with the ideology of recognition

As we know from the study of history, no new system can impose itself upon a previous one without incorporating many of the elements to be found in the latter...

Our judgements about things vary according to the time left us to live -that we think is left us to live.

I have friends who hide in their bedroom for three days every time they have another birthday. That's what brings the wrinkles! I didn't care when I turned 30 or 40 or 50.

Jealousy is the tie that binds, and binds, and binds.

I would suggest respectfully to the president that he is not the sole decider. The decider is a shared and joint responsibility.

To explore what it would mean to live fully, sensually alive and passionately on purpose, I have to drop my preconceived ideas of who and what I am.

In little pockets of conversation, old men were telling stories of ancient floods. Women were talking of about how much rain there'd been in other towns -- Paragould, Lepanto, and Manila.

My dad took me to my first movie.

You needed a new pancreas. The one we bought for you frees you from a dangerous dependency.” “Thanks, but I was enjoying that dependency.