When we fight upstream against a rocky undercurrent, every foothold takes on a kind of urgency.

We lead our lives like water flowing down a hill, going more or less in one direction until we splash into something that forces us to find a new course.

After all, when a stone is dropped into a pond, the water continues quivering even after the stone has sunk to the bottom.

If you aren't the woman I think you are, then this isn't the world I thought it was.

The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves until one day there are none. No hopes. Nothing remains.

I stumbled out into the courtyard to try to flee my misery, but of course we can never flee the misery that is within us.

Can't you see? Every step I have taken, since I was that child on the bridge, has been to bring myself closer to you.

And then I became aware of all the magnificent silk wrapped around my body, and had the feeling I might drown in beauty. At that moment, beauty itself struck me as a kind of painful melancholy.

At the temple there is a poem called "Loss" carved into the stone. It has three words, but the poet has scratched them out. You cannot read loss, only feel it.

Sometimes we get through adversity only by imagining what the world might be like if our dreams should ever come true.

I will think of you every time I need to be reminded that there is beauty and goodness in the world.

Tessa touched his wrist lightly with her hand. "Be brave, " she said. "It's not a duck, is it?

The only way to address terrorism is to deal with the issues that create terrorism, to resolve them where possible, and where that's not possible to ensure that there is an alternative to violence.

I'm a very ordinary human being; I just happen to like reading books.

I'm about being funny. If I can make a joke using profanity, I will. But for the most part, that can get awfully old and boring.

If you do not pray, everything can disappoint you by going wrong. If you do pray, everything can still go wrong, but not in a way that will disappoint you.

We need to stop focusing on people leaving earth and focus on, like Jesus said, the Kingdom of God is the yeast. Yeast invades dough.

The worst thing that can happen to us in an ideological struggle is to become what we are fighting.

Everybody worships me, it's nauseating.

Playing roles that are intense and damaged has always come more easily to me than doing comedies or lighter stuff - that would be taking a huge risk for me.

Forever all goodness will be most charming; forever all wickedness will be most odious.