How starved they seemed for ordinary kindness

...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

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

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.

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.

Liberty a word without which all other words are vain.

In a relationship you want to treat people the way you want to be treated.

As a rule, man is a fool. When it's hot, he wants it cool; When its cool, he wants it hot. Always wanting, what is not.

I cut myself because you wouldn't let me cry. I cried because you wouldn't let me speak. I spoke because you wouldn't let me shine. I shone because I thought you loved me.

I have been on the phone 30 minutes with you and you haven't helped me solve this problem.

I feel like it's a golden age for television.

The true enemies of Social Security and Medicare are those who defend an imploding status quo.

Flown Raven is the country,"I muttered. "City slave," he said. "Farm boy," I shot back. "I've never even seen a farm." "Don't trifle me with details.

Governmental defense of any theology necessarily weakens the legitimacy of both the government and the theology.

We must stop using the language of force and return to the path of civilized diplomatic and political settlement.