“I need someone. I need to hold somebody close. And I need more than this holding. I need someone to understand how I feel at a time like now. And the understanding must be part of the holding.”

In the cold of a winter’s night you got up and put your blanket on their bed so they wouldn’t be cold. You’d kill anyone who tried to harm the.

When you have learned, through discipline, to simplify your life, and so practiced the mindfulness of meditation, and through it loosened the hold of aggression, clinging, and negativity on your whole being, the wisdom of insight can slowly dawn.

We need an equal opportunity society, one in which government does not see its job as picking winners and losers. Where do you go if you want special favors?

Bad quarrels come when two people are wrong. Worse quarrels come when two people are right.

I think mine is a very rich life.

She went out and took a last long look at the shabby little library. She knew she would never see it again.

And always, there was the magic of learning things.

…the reading, the observing, the living from day to day. It was something that had been born into her and her only – the something different from anyone else in the two families.

It was what God or whatever is His equivalent puts into each soul that is given life – the one different thing such as that which makes no two fingerprints on the face of the earth alike.

The neighborhood stores are an important part of a city child’s life.

You won’t die, Francie. You were born to lick this rotten life.

Well, there’s a little bit of man in every woman and a little bit of woman in every man.

Some people do crossword puzzles. I do books.

I wrote about people who liked fake fireplaces in their parlor, who thought a brass horse with a clock embedded in its flank was wonderful.

What was important was that the attempt to write stories kept her straight on the dividing line between truth and fiction. If she had not found this outlet in writing, she might have grown up to be a tremendous liar.

Sometimes I think it’s better to suffer bitter unhappiness and to fight and to scream out, and even to suffer that terrible pain, than to just be… safe. At least she knows she’s living.

My advice wouldn’t be good to anybody. I don’t see it really being greeted with thunderous applause.

We ourselves possess Beauty when we are true to our own being; ugliness is in going over to another order.

Being an entrepreneur is my dream job, as it tests ones tenacity.

We ourselves possess Beauty when we are true to our own being; ugliness is in going over to another order; knowing ourselves, we are beautiful; in self-ignorance, we are ugly.

I was never going to be a doctor or a lawyer, so being a musician seemed to be the best of what was on offer.

An unconscious mind can be full of intelligence. One will find this type of intelligence in every being, and every insect has it.

I wasn’t very worried about the Cold War; I was busy being a musician.

I don’t want people to think I’m not happy when we win – I am. But there’s a difference between being happy for the feeling of accomplishing something and being overjoyed and feeling, ‘This is it – we conquered the world.’ We didn’t. We just won a game.