What is real is always worth it.

She would be half a planet away, floating in a turquoise sea, dancing by moonlight to flamenco guitar.

The phoenix must burn to emerge.

I know it feels like you have all these options and when you make a decision, you lose a world of possibilities. But the reality is, until you make a decision, you have nothing at all.

Remember it all, every insult, every tear. Tattoo it on the inside of your mind. In life, knowledge of poisons is essential. I've told you, nobody becomes an artist unless they have to.

Their love as a dragonfly, skimming over echo park, stoppin to visit the lotus. Eating dreams and drinking blue sky.

How right that the body changed over time, becoming a gallery of scars, a canvas of experience, a testament to life and one's capacity to endure it.

It's such a liability to love another person.

Find someone who will tremble for your touch, someone whose fingers are a poem.

Memory is the fourth dimension to any landscape.

Beauty was empty as a gourd, vain as a parakeet. But it had power. It smelled of musk and oranges and made you close your eyes in a prayer.

The Saviour is my strength.

Dominance. Control. These things the unjust seek most of all. And so it is the duty of the just to defy dominance and to challenge control.

I remember my dad working with me on breaking down my script and writing out a back story for my character and all that stuff.

Atheists are not Americans.

Great. Lookout. I'm a lookout. Another thing to put on my college applications. What do I do if I see someone?" Val looked back. "I'm not sure, actually.

The one thing I do not want to be called is First Lady. It sounds like a saddle horse.

You know the sultans used to light their garden parties with turtles? They'd put candles on their backs and let them wander around. Hundreds of them.

When I was turning 40, I felt that there were no books out there that hit the spot in terms of what I wanted to read.

Passion persuades me one way, reason another. I see the better and approve it, but I follow the worse.

Christianity did not destroy paganism; it adopted it.