“Language is the ticket to plot and character, after all, because both are built out of language.”

It is all about numbers. It is all about sequence. It’s the mathematical logic of being alive.

That she might not actually know us seemed the humblest thing a mother could admit.

Before she knew it was candles, did she think she’d done it herself? With the amazing turns of her hips.

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.

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.

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…

I’m delighted. I don’t know of anybody who had a statue built of them while they were living. It’s a great feeling.

The institutions that we’ve built up over the years to protect our individual privacy rights from the government don’t apply to the private sector.

Though I developed my own personal spiritual relationship later in life, the foundation they laid is what my faith was built upon.

Bill Hicks – blowtorch, excavator, truthsayer, and brain specialist. He will correct your vision. Others will drive on the road he built.

A few thousand are to be built in the next few years, all using taxpayer money. But there is no system, no research, no content, no good programs, no good managers.

The Afghans can’t point and say, “Oh, the Americans built that road. They built that telecommunications facility.

They built that electricity powerhouse,” because nothing has been built so far.

I don’t like talking. It’s how I’m built. Some people gab all day and some play it smogo. I don’t mind talking or smiling, it’s just I don’t do it very much. I haven’t got a smiling face or a talking mouth.