Hospital vigils inspire us to such nostalgia. Hospital vigils take place in slow-time during which the mind floats free, a frail balloon drifting into the sky as into infinity.

That I was sleeping at a time when my husband was dying is so horrible a thought, I can’t confront it.

She will speculate that she didn’t fully know her husband—this will give her leverage to seek him, to come to know him. It will keep her husband “alive” in her memory—elusive, teasing.

How exhausted I am suddenly!—though this has been Ray’s best day in the hospital so far, and we are feeling—almost—exhilarated.

It is the most horrific thought—my husband died among strangers.

The coolly calibrated manipulation of the credulous American public, by an administration bent upon stoking paranoid patriotism!

The gardener is the quintessential optimist: not only does he believe that the future will bear out the fruits of his efforts, he believes in the future.

For writing is a solitary occupation, and one of its hazards is loneliness. But an advantage of loneliness is privacy, autonomy, freedom.

It is utterly naive, futile, uninformed—to think that our species is exceptional. So designated to master the beasts of the Earth, as in the Book of Genesis!

Science is agnostic when it comes to God - not atheistic, as some people prefer to read that laden word wrongly - just agnostic.

One must speak in such a way that although someone else, or many others, or an infinite number of people have said it before, it seems as though you said it first.

There is no better education than rap battling in terms of performance. It makes you fearless.

That's the definition of a mini-series. A mini-series is a show that has no continuing story or narrative elements between one group of episodes and another, so no, I wasn't surprised.

The communists pave the way for him (the Jew).

I lived as best I could, and then I died. Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.

You want to see the people you've sort of come to know and love, or love to hate, you want to see them develop in some way. And I hope people get sort of caught up in that arc.

Establish the eternal truth that acquiescence under insult is not the way to escape war.

For the most important decisions in your life, trust your intuition, and then work with everything you have, to prove it right.

When you have two busy kids running around the house, returning e-mails is a task, let alone surfing the web.