You can turn off the song the way you cannot the actual experience.

The frustration of being marginalized often gets misdirected at the most visible members of one's own community, because they are more accessible than the real agents of marginalization.

Abandonment by a lover won't kill us. But it awakens the parts of us that remember when it could.

It has been my experience that the people I judge most harshly are the ones in whom I recognize some part of myself.

Anyone who makes a life of what they love is a hero to me, and it's important for those people to be visible in every kind of life, every kind of love, every kind of work.

New York at night, from its bridges, is a miracle. When I first came to the city, it took all my fantasies and set them on fire, turned them into flickering constellations of light.

You don't have to write like David Foster Wallace or James Baldwin or Maggie Nelson - indeed, you shouldn't. Those writers are doing it better than you ever could.

I can still discern people's weaknesses, but it doesn't make me want to exploit them; it makes me want to hug them.

Torch songs are confessions. They are an expression of feeling that cannot be concealed or contained or minimized. They are marked by anguish, yes, but also by yielding.

The craft work becomes a mediator between me and my secrets, between me and the listener.

Letting go of the cozy stories you've been carrying around is devastating. But there's more room for new stuff after you do it.

For he who loves God without faith reflects on himself, while the person who loves God in faith reflects on God.

When you're young, you don't realize the sacrifices that people are making for you.

"Walter," she said, looking full upon him with her affectionate eyes, "like you, I hope for better things. I will pray for them, and believe that they will arrive."

Most Americans approach the problems of the Middle East with a pro-Israeli bias - and rightly so.

I would have thought that they [Boris Johnson and Nigel Farag] would have had a plan,instead of developing a plan they are leaving the boat.

The shapes arranged themselves into words, and the words spelled out a delicious and wonderful phrase: Once upon a time.

Big brows weren’t the look in L.A., where I grew up. But my mom instilled in me that it’s the quirky things that make you beautiful.

Were it possible for us to wait for ourselves to come into the room, not many of us would find our hearts breaking into flower as we heard the door handle turn.

Each of us is born with a built-in GPS, God's Positioning System, a sophisticated navigational package that divinely aligns us with people and events and keeps us from losing our way.

You can't control things by being nervous.