With fiction, it could be about anything. It just has to be good writing, like Maria Semple's "Where'd You Go, Bernadette," which I read recently. I want to forget I have a book in my hand.

You will learn a lot about yourself if you stretch in the direction of goodness, of bigness, of kindness, of forgiveness, of emotional bravery. Be a warrior for love.

What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?

Don't surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn't true anymore.

Whatever happens to you belongs to you. Make it yours. Feed it to yourself even if it feels impossible to swallow. Let it nurture you, because it will.

The story of human intimacy is one of constantly allowing ourselves to see those we love most deeply in a new, more fractured light. Look hard. Risk that.

You have to say I am forgiven again and again until it becomes the story you believe about yourself.

That my complicated life could be made so simple was astounding.

Real love moves freely in both directions. Don't waste your time on anything else.

Be about ten times more magnanimous than you believe yourself capable of. Your life will be a hundred times better for it.

Love is our essential nutrient. Without it, life has little meaning. It's the best thing we have to give and the most valuable thing we receive. It's worthy of all the hullabaloo.

Don't try to make children grow up to be like you, or they may do it.

It is not, in the long run, the battles and sieges that signify, but the permanent effect on the human race of the changes they help to bring about.

Have you seena dog lick the hand that thrashed it?!

The library is a symbol of freedom.

Wie lange braucht man jeden Tag, bis man sich kennt.""How long it takes us, each day, to know each other.

Republican women bring an important voice to the table.

Big sisters are the crab grass in the lawn of life.

Aiming at giving our kids a competitive edge in a consumer society - that, in principle, is a goal that is limitless.

We need a complete ban on soft money, which is sort of an enveloping problem, and a ceiling on the amount of money that can be spent on a given race.

Someone needs to explain to me why wanting clean drinking water makes you an activist, and why proposing to destroy water with chemical warfare doesnt make a corporation a terrorist.