“If you don’t say what you’re thinking, you end up lying when you really need to speak up.”

It was so gorgeous it almost felt like sadness.

When things get really bad, you take comfort in the placeness of a place.

I had been walking in silence for so long,I had almost forgotten what my own voice sounded like.My knees were tired;my toes were beginning to ache.

Things look different depending on your perspective. As I see it, fighting to bridge those gaps isn’t what really matters. The most important thing is to know them inside and out, as differences, and to understand why certain people are the way they are.

People who are going to get along really well know it almost as soon as they meet. You spend a little while talking and everyone starts to feel this conviction, you’re all equally sure that you’re at the beginning of something good. That’s how it is when you meet people you’re going to be with for a long time.

Everything that had happened was shockingly beautiful, enough to make you crazy.

In the uncertain ebb and flow of time and emotions, much of one’s life history is etched in the senses. And things of no particular importance, or irreplaceable things, can suddenly resurface in a café one winter night.

I was happy. I loved the night, I loved t so much it almost hurt. In the night everything seemed possible. I wasn’t sleepy at all.

I saw the sky and sea and sand and the flickering flames of the bonfire through my tears. All at once, it rushed into my head with tremendous speed, and made me feel dizzy. It was beautiful. Everything that happened was shockingly beautiful, enough to make you crazy.

Her eyes were those of someone who’s just fallen in love, someone who sees nothing but her lover, someone who has no fear of anything. The eyes of someone who believes that every dream will come true, that reality will move if you just give it a push.

As I grow older, much older, I will experience many things, and I will hit rock bottom again and again. Again and again I will suffer; again and again I will get back on my feet. I will not be defeated. I won’t let my spirit be destroyed.

I held the feeling in my heart; the urge to discuss it died out. There was all the time in the world. In the endless repetition of other nights, other mornings, this moment, too, might become a dream.

In the uncertain ebb and flow of time and emotions much of one’s life history is etched in the senses.

No matter what, I want to continue living with the awareness that I will die. Without that, I am not alive.

When was it I realized that, on this truly dark and solitary path we all walk, the only way we can light is our own? Although I was raised with love, I was always lonely. Someday, without fail, everyone will disappear, scattered into the blackness of time.

Everything in life has some good in it. And when something awful happens, the goodness stands out even more–it’s sad, but that’s the truth.

Everybody just needs to realize that when you write something you’re just in one mood. I was told I needed to write it and it was overdue; I don’t even remember what day it was.

Now in these troubled times, even more than ever, we need an affirmation that there is goodness and beauty in the world.

Dictatorships by their nature are unrepresentative as they neglect the social needs of the people.

To be good, you need to believe in what you’re doing.

We are all capable of change and growth; we just need to know where to begin.

Who among us would ask our children for a loan, so we could spend money we do not have on things we do not need?

I will always prefer a hardback book, but I’m drawn to digital because it’s so easy to acquire them when I’m having a need-to-read moment.

President Obama came to visit me in the hospital. He said, ‘I wish you were still in the Senate; I need your help.’ I’m not certain I can help on everything. Maybe some things.