When I drank, the part that felt dangerous and needy grew bright and strong and real. The part that coveted love kicked into gear. The yes grew louder than the no.

The real struggle is about you: you, a person who has to learn to live in the real world, to inhabit her own skin, to know her own heart, to stop waiting for life to begin.

All dogs can be guide dogs of a sort, leading us to places we didn't even know we needed or wanted to go.

Before you get a dog, you can't quite imagine what living with one might be like; afterward, you can't imagine living any other way.

Happy and alone, you say? Reclusive and merry? How oxymoronic! Pas possible! Alas, the concept is lost on so many.

I've always been drawn to solitude, felt a kind of luxurious relief in its self-generated pace and rhythms.

When you quit drinking you stop waiting.

Solitude is a breeding ground for idiosyncrasy, and I relish that about it, the way it liberates whim.

Fall in love with a dog, and in many ways you enter a new orbit, a universe that features not just new colors but new rituals, new rules, a new way of experiencing attachment.

Dogs are fantasies that don't disappoint.

Academic achievement was something I'd always sought as a form of reward. Good grades pleased my parents, good grades pleased my teachers; you got them in order to sew up approval.

Most poor people do not really aspire to end poverty

Hard work is one of the greatest principles which I have carefully guided my life by.

Golden lads and girls all must As chimney-sweepers come to dust.

But too many people now climb onto the cross merely to be seen from a greater distance, even if they have to trample somewhat on the one who has been there so long.

In drawing, I don't erase. I believe the original gesture has to be the best.

Never let a day pass without looking at some perfect work of art, hearing some great piece of music and reading, in part, some great book.

Do not complain about the length of the road! What will you do when the road finishes? Let it continue!

She poured out the liquid music of her voice to quench the thirst of his spirit.

The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen in his person and property and in their management.

Cultural creation... begins where chaos and insecurity end.