... nothing lasts long. We all come to life and gather allies and build empires and die, all in a single moment - maybe a single pulse of some giant processor somewhere.

Walking the stacks in a library, dragging your fingers across the spines -- it's hard not to feel the presence of sleeping spirits.

Neel takes a sharp breath and I know exactly what it means. It means: I have waited my whole life to walk through a secret passage built into a bookshelf.

All the secrets of the world worth knowing are hiding in plain site.

Let me give you some advice: make friends with a millionaire when he's a friendless sixth-grader.

He asked <...> Rosemary, why do you love books so much? And I said, Well, I don't know <...> I suppose I love them because they're quiet, and I can take them to the park.

Your life must be an open city, with all sorts of ways to wander in.

Her home is the burrow of a bibliophile hobbit -- low-ceilinged, close-walled, and brimming over with books.

You know, I'm really starting to think the whole world is just a patchwork quilt of crazy little cults, all with their own secret spaces, their own records, their own rules.

A clerk and a ladder and warm golden light, and then: the right book exactly, at exactly the right time.

There is no immortality that is not built on friendship and work done with care. All the secrets in the world worth knowing are hiding in plain sight.

Grief is a peculiar emotion.

A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is alright. This is common sense really. You understand sleep when you are awake, not well you are sleeping.

I am running for re-election no matter who runs.

I've never been a feminist.

I had a healthy appetite [being pregnant]. I got more healthy as time goes on, and they grew. I never let myself go.

What has reality shows got to do with reality? It is beyond unreality; there is nothing real about it.

I think sometimes fate cuts you a break. Like it says, okay, you've had enough of that crap, so it's time you fell into something nice. See what you make out of it.

I realize my need to be liked or my need for strangers to rate me well, even with their words and their thoughts, I'm not alone in that, and the whole thing is set up culturally so we feel that way.

The U.S. government engages with many countries around the world in official dialogues on human rights.

If people try to judge you or shame you for doing safe, consensual things that make you happy, I can guarantee you they're bad people.