Fabricating reality was criminal; editing it, commonplace.

[s]he was a compulsive pessimist, always looking for the soft brown spot in the fruit, pressing so hard she created it.

In life, redemption was walking up the down escalator: stop to congratulate yourself, and back you slid.

Religious speech is extreme, emotional, and motivational. It is anti-literal, relying on metaphor, allusion, and other rhetorical devices, and it assumes knowledge within a community of believers.

Perhaps this was the secret to being at peace: want nothing but what is given to you.

Jealousy clings to love's underside like bats to a bridge.

Sorrow can be a bully.

The September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon prompted a fundamental shift in the American government's approach to Islamic terrorism.

There were in life rarely, if ever, "right" decisions, never perfect ones, only the best to be made under the circumstances.

Nothing in life gets dropped without someone else having to pick it up.

The rhetoric is the first step, it coarsens attitudes

Lacey-girl, books take you anywhere. Any place you want to go. You remember that always.

In a formal socialization, no one individual can stand without the other to rely on, regardless of the situation.

The older you get, the faster time passes in your mind, so use your time according to what is most important.

My father was an electrical engineer who worked at Westinghouse in Pittsburgh. When I was growing up, my mother wrote humor columns for the local paper. She was the Erma Bombeck of Murrysville, Pa.

Drum on your drums, batter on your banjos, sob on the long cool winding saxophones. Go to it, O jazzmen.

No true and permanent fame can be founded, except in labors which promote the happiness of mankind.

It is absurd to entrust the defense of a country to people who own nothing in it.

I was going to be a doctor, but I think my music allowed me to help more people than I could have done one-on-one as a psychologist. Just like other people's music really helped me.

Technically speaking, there is no music whatsoever on a CD. Lots of information, but no music.

Learning to charge properly is a vital key to abundance. Affirm that you will never devalue yourself by charging less than what you feel you are worth.