“But I loved George in part because he believed me; because if I stood in a cold, plain room and yelled FIRE, he would walk over and ask me why.”

Mom loved my brother more. Not that she didn’t love me – I felt the wash of her love every day.

But what I kept wondering about is this: that first second when she felt her skirt burning, what did she think?

It was a fleeting statement, one I didn’t think she’d hold on to; after all, she had birthed us alone, diapered and fed us, helped us with homework, kissed and hugged us, poured her love into us.

And the warmth of the music inside her, did she believe, for even one glorious second, that her passion had arrived?

That at the same time of this very intimate act of concentrating so carefully on the details of our mother’s palm and fingertips.

To see someone you love, in a bad setting, is one of the great barometers of gratitude.

We’re all getting too smart. Our brains are just getting bigger and bigger, and the world dries up and dies when there’s too much thought and not enough heart.

Mom flipped through the magazines like the pages needed to be slapped.

As a writer you ask yourself to dream while awake.

You can ruin anything if you focus at it.

I peeled the skin off a grape in slippery little triangles, and I understood then that I would be undressing every item of food I could because my clothes would be staying on.

I was right at the edge of their circle, like the tail of a Q…

It seems the best work I do is when I am really allowing the unconscious to rule the page and then later I can go back and hack around and make sense of things.

I knew if I ate anything of hers again, it would lkely tell me the same message: help me,

It seemed to happen in springs, the revealing of things.

I am not happy, help me — like a message in a bottle sent in each meal to the eater, and I got it. I got the message.

Science for its part will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition.

Infrastructure sector is all about building assets for the country. It is part of nation building.

I’m proud to be part of the Dr. Pepper Scholarship Giveaway. It’s a great program that gives me the chance to brighten the day for some lucky college students with free tuition.

Ideas emerge when a part of the real or imagined world is studied for its own sake.

For me, the real earth is that chosen part of the universe, still almost universally dispersed and in course of gradual segregation, but which is little by little taking on body and form in Christ.

I wouldn’t change anything for the world, although the fame part of this [entertainment] industry is tough to handle at times.

Driving at high speed where safe and legal is part of my life. As well as a higher top speed I wanted even better stability in my FX and that meant work on the

The most satisfying thing in life is to have been able to give a large part of one’s self to others.