Here's what I've learned - people will hurt you, but you don't have to respond: Not every mean comment or cruel act deserves to be noticed.

December's wintery breath is already clouding the pond, frosting the pane, obscuring summer's memory.

Freshly cut Christmas trees smelling of stars and snow and pine resin - inhale deeply and fill your soul with wintry night.

The winter is kind and leaves red berries on the boughs for hungry sparrows.

I hear the sounds of melting snow outside my window every night and with the first faint scent of spring, I remember life exists

Dark furrow lines grid the snow, punctuated by orange abacus beads of pumpkins - now the crows own the field.

You think so logically... like a hawk soaring - I feel so chaotically... like a kite without a tail plummeting to earth.

I love it when the dark bottle of night spills out, and the Moon writes in chalk about us.

It must be hard when you are a beautiful woman and no one will look at your soul.

Sunday evenings are heavier than clouds with rain, darker too and often interminable.

I'm shy in person - so afraid to confess my love - I need a go-between - our mutual friend, the Moon.

Solitude is a terrible thing, for it permits the imagination to picture, in detail, that which perhaps should never be articulated.

Your father says a wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountaintop.

We need a strong police force - the Interior Ministry of the Republic of Chechnya. We have to get rid of the traitors who have managed to penetrate into the law-enforcement department.

Money is power, and rare are the heads that can withstand the possession of great power.

My boy, the 'quenelles de sole' were splendid, but the peas were poor. You should shake the pan gently, all the time, like this.

I believe that anything man himself can do for me, God can do for me in a greater way. I decided to pray and to seek God on my own. I just stayed in The Word. And it worked.

Remember that nothing will supply the want of prudence, and that negligence and irregularity long continued will make knowledge useless, wit ridiculous, and genius contemptible.

Editing feels almost like sculpting or a form of continuing the writing process.

"You're full of contradictions, Ms. Wallace." I looked up at him and arched a brow. "I'm a girl. That's part of the job description, Mr. Maxfield."

None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army. To keep ours armed and disciplined is therefore at all times important.