“Become a better person and be sure to know who you are, before meeting someone new and hoping that person knows who you are.”

Even when the winds of misfortune blow, amazing things can still happen.

For they had lived together long enough to know that love was always love, anytime and anyplace, but it was more solid the closer it came to death.

Take advantage of it now, while you are young, and suffer all you can, because these things don’t last your whole life.

She likes to try everything, out of curiosity, but she’ll be sorry if she isn’t guided by her heart.

Just imagine, a cow on the balcony of the nation, what an awful thing, what a shitty country.

Nobody deserves your tears, but whoever deserves them will not make you cry.

The more transparent the writing, the more visible the poetry.

Inspiration gives no warnings.

He pleaded so much that he lost his voice. His bones began to fill with words.

You have to have spent the night at sea, sitting in a life raft and looking at your watch, to know that the night is immeasurably longer than the day.

It had to teach her to think of love as a state of grace: not the means to anything but the alpha and omega, an end it itself.

The truth is I’m getting old, I said. We already are old, she said with a sigh. What happens is that you don’t feel it on the inside, but from the outside everybody can see it.

It is a triumph of life that old people lose their memories of inessential things.

Old people, with other old people, are not so old.

The only regret I will have in dying is if it is not for love.

What is essential, therefore, is not that you no longer believe, but that God continues to believe in you.

It’s easier to go down a hill than up it but the view is much better at the top.

It is my art. I am better at it than I ever was. And I will do it as long as I can. When you reach a certain age you can slough off what is unnecessary and concentrate on what is. And why not?

A harmful truth is better than a useful lie.

Everyday is a gift, every gift is a chance to feel certain and every certainty is a exhilarating inspiration to do better.

Just set yourself a goal and try and stick to it. Because you’ll always end up better than where you started.

There is something better, if possible, that a man can give than his life. That is his living spirit to a service that is not easy, to resist counsels that are hard to resist, to stand against purposes that are difficult to stand against.

It’s not getting any better for the American people. It seems to be getting worse. That’s predictable; education is a cycle. Stupidity breeds more stupidity.

You’re stronger, and you’re better, and you’re ready for whatever.