“You don’t love because: you love despite; not for the virtues, but despite the faults.”

Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.

And sure enough, even waiting will end…if you can just wait long enough.

All l mixed up with them, like trying to, having to, move your arms and legs with strings, only the same strings are hitched to all the other arms and legs and the others all trying and they don’t know why either except that the strings are all in one another’s way.

Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.

It’s all now you see: tomorrow began yesterday and yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow.

To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.

Haunted by wrong turns and roads not taken, we pursue images perceived as new but whose providence dates to the dim dramas of childhood, which are themselves but ripples of consequence echoing down the generations.

Pouring out liquor is like burning books.

The most beautiful description of a woman is by understatement.

Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.

A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.

We have to start teaching ourselves not to be afraid.

How false the most profound book turns out to be when applied to life.

You could do so much for me if you just would. If you just knew. I am I and you are you and I know it and you don’t know it and you could do so much for me if you just would and if you just would then I could tell you and then nobody would have to know it except you and me.

Facts and truth really don’t have much to do with each other.

Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.

All the different nations in the world, despite their differences of appearance and religion and language and way of life, still have one thing in common, and that is what’s inside of all of us.

Despite the great advantages of digital video and the great ease of using the medium, still those who use it have first to understand the sensitivities of how to best use the medium.

Despite all of your mistakes, I stayed – and that was mine.

Life wasn’t always easy to live but you are here despite it all.

Walking away from someone that you believe you love, despite them being an unhealthy match for you, is one of the hardest things to do.

Our greatest human freedom is that, despite whatever our physical situation is in life, we are always free to choose our thoughts.

Despite the distance that separates us, we are not limited by borders. We are one global Armenian nation together.

Courage is an inner resolution to go forward despite obstacles