“The world is not a wish-granting factory.”

Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back.

What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person.

The past feels distant, even when it’s near. The future feels assured, even when it isn’t.

Much of my life had been devoted to trying not to cry in front of people who loved me.

Maybe there is something you’re afraid to say, or someone you’re afraid to love, or somewhere you’re afraid to go. It’s gonna hurt. It’s gonna hurt because it matters.

It is so hard to leave, until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world.

Y’all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die.

When you acknowledge that there is nothing repulsive or unforgivable or shameful about yourself, it becomes easier to be that authentic person and feel like you’re living a less performed life.

I don’t know a perfect person. I only know flawed people who are still worth loving.

I may die young, but at least I’ll die smart.

Your responsibility is not to the people you’re making the gift for, but the gift itself.

I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasures of existence

You can love someone so much but you can never love people as much as you can miss them.

You cannot invent an algorithm that is as good at recommending books as a good bookseller.

You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful.

The pleasure of remembering had been taken from me, because there was no longer anyone to remember with.

Ninety-nine percent of all land animals eaten or used to produce milk and eggs in the United States are factory farmed. So although there are important exceptions, to speak about eating animals today is to speak about factory farming.

The more exposure people have to the realities of factory farming, the more we will see people rejecting it. It’s already happening.

I’d always thought the world was a wish-granting factory.

If you’re working at the factory and you’re cursing every day that you get up, at all costs get out of it. You’ll just make yourself ill.

I’ve worked in construction, in a factory sewing clothes. I also sold flowers and doughnuts – just odd jobs to try to make 10 pesos, which is equivalent to 20 cents.

Development is not about factories, dams and roads. Development is about people. The goal is material, cultural and spiritual fulfilment for the people. The human factor is of supreme value in development.

We passed the Children’s Bureau bill calculated to prevent children from being employed too early in factories.

Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea, God Bless, keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and paid forward for the next kid who comes along.