Distance was a dangerous thing, she knew. Distance changed people.

...the face has limited space. My mother used to say, if you fill your face with laughing, there will be no more room for crying.

Money can buy the necessary police order. Justice is sold to the highest bidder

Birth and death - what could be more monstrous than that? We like to deceive ourselves and call it wondrous and beautiful and majestic, but it's freakish, let's face it.

Remembering bred its own peculiar sorrow. It seemed so unfair: that time should render both sadness and happiness into a source of pain.

People forget how vulnerable they are despite their shirts and shoes and briefcases, how this hungry and cruel world could strip them, put them in the same position as my beggars.

How starved they seemed for ordinary kindness

The return of solitude was not quite as Dina expected it to be. These many years I made a virtue of inescapable reality, she thought, calling it peace and quiet.

Did life treat everyone so wantonly, ripping the good things to pieces while letting bad things fester and grow like fungus

the secret of survival was to balance hope and despair

Where was the line between compassion and foolishness, kindness and weakness? And that was from her position. From theirs, it might be a line between mercy and cruelty, consideration and callousness.

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.

It is amazing how a new child can refocus one's direction seconds after its birth.

Ask for help. Receiving is an act of generosity.

I think you can be an honest person and lie about any number of things.

I've always had a love for horses since I was really young. When I was 5 years old, the only thing that made me happy was when they'd take me out and give me pony rides.

Because good writing in a TV cartoon is so rare, I think the animation on The Simpsons is often overlooked.

When you do have really tapped out resources that cover so many investigations, it can help you move through and discard some faster.

Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts.

He passes from lyric to epic poetry in order to speak about the world and the torment in the world through man, rationally and emotionally. The poet then becomes a danger.

If lyrics sold then truth be told/I'd probably be just as rich and famous as Jay-Z.