I guess that's what saying good-bye is always like--like jumping off an edge. The worst part is making the choice to do it. Once you're in the air, there's nothing you can do but let go.

Hope keeps you alive.

A good friend keeps your secrets for you. A best friend helps you keep your own secrets.

I shiver, thinking how easy it is to be totally wrong about people-to see one tiny part of them and confuse it for the whole, to see the cause and think it's the effect or vice versa

Things change after you die, though, I guess because dying is the loneliest thing you can do.

How is it possible, I think, to change so much and not be able to change anything at all?

This is what happens when you try to help people. You get screwed.

Lindsay calls them the Pugs: pretty from far away, ugly up close.

Everything in me feels fluttering and free, like I could take off from the ground at any second. Music, I think, he makes me feel like music.

And then, just at that moment, when I'm no longer sure if I'm dreaming or awake or walking some valley in between where everything you wish for comes true, I feel the flutter of his lips on mine.

Hunky Heroes, rescuing distressed women, captive princesses, and girls without wheels since 1684. p. 450

I have some unfinished business to complete at the University of Oregon.

I wish I could dance like Michael Jackson. I'd love to be able to have my life exactly the way it is, but with his dance moves.

One reason why we fail to hear God speak is that we are not attentive. We suffer from what might be called 'spiritual mindlessness.'

Shot at twenty-seven times - what a Dominican number.

When I'm my own editor, there's very little difference between the first draft and the final. I write what feels right to begin with. I rarely make any major changes.

I’ve worked in construction, in a factory sewing clothes. I also sold flowers and doughnuts - just odd jobs to try to make 10 pesos, which is equivalent to 20 cents.

I would also love to visit the Asian countries soon.

There can be no profit, if the outlay exceeds it. [Non enim potest quaestus consistere, si eum sumptus superat.]

Man is the broken giant, and in all his weakness both his body and his mind are invigorated by habits of conversation with nature.

Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.