“Last time I talked to her she didn’t sound like herself. She’s depressed. It’s awful what happens when people run out of money. They start thinking they’re no good.”

My worst nightmare is being stuck somewhere with nothing to read.

I’m of a fearsome mind to throw my arms around every living librarian who crosses my path, on behalf of the souls they never knew they saved.

Some of us know how we came by our fortune and some of us don’t; but we wear it all the same

The most assiduous task of parenting is to divine the difference between boundaries and bondage.

People read books to escape the uncertainties of life.

Everything you’re sure is right can be wrong in another place.

I’ve about decided that’s the main thing that separates happy people from the other people: the feeling that you’re a practical item, with a use, like a sweater or a socket wrench.

I learned to produce whether I wanted to or not. It would be easy to say oh, I have writer’s block, oh, I have to wait for my muse. I don’t. Chain that muse to your desk and get the job done.

How pointless life could be, what a foolish business of inventing things to love, just so you could dread losing them.

It’s the one thing we never quite get over: that we contain our own future.

For Lou Ann, life itself was a life-threatening enterprise.

Time cures you first, and then it kills you.

In a world as wrong as this one, all we can do is make things as right as we can.

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.

What you lose in blindness is the space around you, the place where you are, and without that you might not exist. You could be nowhere at all.

Mr. Shepherd, ye cannot stop a bad thought from coming into your head. But ye need not pull up a chair and bide it sit down.” – Mrs. Brown

In the long run, most of us spend about fifteen minutes total in the entanglements of passion, and the rest of our days looking back on it, humming the tune.

The only crying shame about it is, when good things happen to you, you run short of time. It takes the same amount of time, however, to tell people, ‘It’s good to see you again. I’m sorry we only have a minute to talk,’ as it does to say, ‘I don’t have time to talk with you’ period.

The interests of the Soviet Union are in controlling highly developed countries and having the benefit of their economies so that they can run their own inefficient empire.

People may find it more comfortable to listen to us if we equivocate, but in the long run only words that discomfort them are going to change our situation.

Corner one of the hundreds of doctors who specialize in autism recovery, and they’ll tell you stories of dozens of kids in their practice who no longer have autism. Ask them to speak to the press and they’ll run for the door. They know better.

It’s insane when someone shows up to your show and is like, “You could run off with me right now!” I’m like, “It’s cool, I think I’m gonna go read.”

By running away from the world no one can get peace. Anywhere you go the problems will go with you, because the problems are inside you and not outside. Outside is simply a projection of inside.

A woman who is willing to be herself and pursue her own potential runs not so much the risk of loneliness, as the challenge of exposure to more interesting men – and people in general.