Anyone who is desperate or alone will agree there is comfort in routine.

I think people would be happier if they admitted things more often. In a sense we are all prisoners of some memory, or fear, or disappointment - we are all defined by something we can’t change.

In the end I didn't know who I was crying for, but it was something my body wanted to do, as though trying to digest grief.

Love is also a violence, and cannot be undone.

We cross from memory into imagination with only a vague awareness of change.

Sometimes I wake up and lie still enough to hear a petal drop from the vase of flowers. Sometimes I lie awake and wish there was someone to hear my falling.

He realized this early on, and realized too that what people think are their lives are merely its conditions. The truth is closer than thought and lies buried in what we already know.

I tried to convey to the boy how people’s lives are often altered by curved lines read slowly from paper, sand, or stone.

When he smiles, they mostly look away. But Martin likes to think they carry his smile for a few blocks – that even the smallest gesture is something grand.

We all have different lives, Martin believes – but in the end probably feel the same things, and regret the fear we thought might somehow sustain us.

I was afraid of the sea when I was a girl. Someone said it went on forever and that frightened me. I wondered why my parents had chosen to live at the beginning and the end of the world.

We pledge ourselves to liberate all our people from the continuing bondage of poverty, deprivation, suffering, gender and other discrimination.

We live and breathe words...but writing them down makes you escape into new worlds. Only those who write would understand.

There is nothing more thrilling in this world, I think, than having a child that is yours, and yet is mysteriously a stranger.

I look at you because I can't look away.

There are always those who would put on armour and go into battle. but the real genius is in finding a way to get what you desire without dying for it.

Which painting in the National Gallery would I save if there was a fire? The one nearest the door of course.

To slight a single human being, is to slight those divine powers and thus to harm not only that being but with him, the whole world.

You should be a hero to yourself. And if you're not... check it out.

Who will say with confidence that sexual abuse is more permanently damaging to children than threatening them with the eternal and unquenchable fires of hell?

Well, I'm an artist to the core. And my objective has always been to use my talents and my skills to elevate humanity through my art.