I woke to the sound of rain.

because wherever I sat—on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok—I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.

There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you into old friends.

I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, "This is what it is to be happy.

I wanted to crawl in between those black lines of print, the way you crawl through a fence, and go to sleep under that beautiful big green fig-tree.

I felt very still and empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo.

My mother said the cure for thinking too much about yourself was helping somebody who was worse off than you.

I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow.

There is something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you are the only extra person in the room.

I began to think vodka was my drink at last. It didn’t taste like anything, but it went straight down into my stomach like a sword swallowers’ sword and made me feel powerful and godlike.

I may have made a straight A in physics, but I was panic-struck. Physics made me sick the whole time I learned it.

You are never to drive like that, ” I told them. “Even if you are ever wealthy enough to own a Jaguar.

Your life is full of purpose, push past the set back and press into the set up.

The other night I ate at a real nice family restaurant. Every table had an argument going.

The glue that holds all relationships together ... is trust, and trust is based on integrity.

The idea that vaccines are a primary cause of autism is not as crackpot as some might wish. Autism's 60-fold rise in 30 years matches a tripling of the US vaccine schedule.

For the rest of my life?" His voice softens. "Do you want that, Ella May? Do you want me eternally, infinitely, forever, till death do us part?

The way of the world is, to praise dead saints, and persecute living ones.

The phrase "work-life balance" tells us that people think that work is the opposite of life. We should be talking about life-life balance.

I was born to play football, just like Beethoven was born to write music and Michelangelo was born to paint.

In Manhattan, when you're out of the front door, you're on, and you have to be ready to smile and speak to people.