You never know, until it happens, what you will owe the dead.

Under every friendship there is a difficult sentence that must be said, in order that the friendship can be survived.

Zoe let the poetry flow over her, like shadows on water, sunlight against stone: timeworn words shaped like stars, like shells, like the ruins of lost temples, soft as the breaths of mystics.

[The Democrats] have got to do a better job of showing up.

That a greater fool than Jane Eyre had never breathed the breath of life; that a more fantastic idiot had never surfeited herself on sweet lies, and swallowed poison as if it were nectar.

It is always cruel to laugh at people, of course, although sometimes if they are wearing an ugly hat it is hard to control yourself.

God shapes the world by prayer. The more prayer there is in the world the better the world will be, the mightier the forces of against evil

You will be dead so long as you refuse to die.

A work of art is said to be perfect in proportion as it does not remind the spectator of the process by which it was created.

There is something complete about Stevie Wonder, and one senses that he is not only exceptionally important today, but will continue to be for as long as he chooses.

People who don't pay attention to the question of justification are often rather uninteresting, in my opinion. I am most fascinated by characters who struggle with the demands of justification.

The best substitute for money is ingenuity.