When I was a boy, I used to wake up thinking that the world was ending.

The summer sun was not meant for boys like me. Boys like me belonged to the rain.

Another secret of the universe: Sometimes pain was like a storm that came out of nowhere. The clearest summer could end in a downpour. Could end in lightning and thunder.

I wondered if my smile was as big as hers. Maybe as big. But not as beautiful.

Water was something he loved, something he respected. He understood its beauty and its dangers. He talked about swimming as if it were a way of life.

I bet you could sometimes find all the mysteries of the universe in someone's hand.

How could I have ever been ashamed of loving Dante Quintana?

The day he came home from the hospital, he cried. I held him. I thought he would never stop.I knew that a part of him would never be the same.They cracked more than his ribs.

You can’t expect to go both ways when you’re driving on a one-way street.

It started to rain and we just sat. Sat and watched the rain in silence.

Everyone was always becoming someone else.Sometimes, when you were older, you became someone younger. And me, I felt old. How can aguy who’s about to turn seventeen feel old?

I will write my way into another life.

Every time we burn a gallon of gas or an acre of rain forest, aren't we killing the future to preserve the present?

Gentlemen prefer blondes, but take what they can get.

My husband's family was terribly refined. Within their circle you could know Beethoven, but God forbid if you were Beethoven.

Human society is a ceaseless growth, and unfoldment in terms of spirituality.

I decided to shift my energy and concentration into changing my lifestyle and diet and taking charge of my own illness.

When Mama prayed, lives were changed. Not much more than five foot tall, but mountains big and small crumbled all away.

Diversity hasn't a thing to do with why this country is great. Diversity is not a factor in any way when defining or explaining America's greatness.

I always want to learn but I am sure on my dying day I will feel like I left something in the bucket.

I don't use the computer. I do sketches, very quickly, often more than 100 on the same formal research.