“You see mother, you had no life of your own. They have no idea. One has only a life of one’s own.”

The artist deals with what cannot be said in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.

If it’s important, your heart remembers.

It’s frightening when things you love appear suddenly changed from what you have always known.

They all attended Hester’s church, which Dellarobia viewed as a complicated pyramid scheme of moral debt and credit resting ultimately on the shoulders of the Lord, but rife with middle managers.

High fashion has the shelf life of potato salad. And when past its prime, it is similarly deadly.

The moth settled onto the curtain and sat still. It was an astonishing creature, with black and white wings patterned in geometric shapes, scarlet underwings, and a fat white body with black spots running down it like a snowman’s coal buttons.

When I want to take God at his word exactly, I take a peep out the window at His creation. Because that, darling, He makes fresh for us everyday.

Global commerce is driven by a single conviction: the inalienable right to earn profit, regardless of any human cost.

You can’t replace people you love with other people…But you can trust that you’re not going to run out of people to love.

Will you explain to me why people encourage delusional behaviour in children, and medicate it in adults?

There is no perfect time to write. There is only now.

You can be as earnest and ridiculous as you need to be, if you don’t attempt it in isolation. The ridiculously earnest are known to travel in groups. And they are known to change the world.

The talkers are rising above the thinkers.

Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.

Every betrayal contains a perfect moment, a coin stamped heads or tails with salvation on the other side.

If you never stepped on anybody’s toes, you never been for a walk.

There are no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ people. Some are a little better or a little worse, but all are activated more by misunderstanding than malice.

The Germans and I no longer speak the same language.

Virtue knows no color line.

There is no pleasure in the world like writing well and going fast.

Most people thought I was a dork. But if you have a sense of humor about it, no one can bring you down.

No battle is ever won … victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.

No nation, savage or civilized, save only the United States of America, has confessed its inability to protect its women save by hanging, shooting, and burning alleged offenders

Make a habit of two things: to help; or at least to do no harm.