“What was important wasn’t the fireworks, it was that we were together this evening, together in this place, looking up into the sky at the same time.”

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.

I felt how important the simplest things were, like feeling proud, finding something funny, stretching yourself, retreating into yourself.

No matter where you are, you’re always a bit on your own, always an outsider.

The strange thing about Africa is how past, present and future come together in a kind of rough jazz, if you like.

A great operation on the wrong patient is just as bad as a horrible operation on the right patient. So, you have to have all that together.

My brother and I are always trying to figure out a way to work again together.

I wrote about the life of a housing officer in Britain, in a pretty rough area of London. Maybe it was because I’m a big-mouth and an exhibitionist, and I’m slightly egotistical. All those things have to come together for a writer.

I have a lot of intention behind what I put out there. The reason all this stuff I do works together, the environmental and social, collaborating with ballet companies to score a show, the bike tour – all of that stuff comes together through community building with music.

In terms of a narrative nonfiction book, when you’re describing scenes that you have multiple sources for, and that you have differing sources for, and you decide to choose a path that puts all that information together.

It is no longer a question of a Christian going about to convert others to the faith, but of each one being ready to listen to the other and so to grow together in mutual understanding.

Tonight, you are hearing from the Democratic women of the Senate… We stand together on so many issues: economic prosperity, quality education for all, protecting a woman’s right to choose