It didn't matter where you were, if you were in a room full of books you were at least halfway home.

She was the most beautiful, terrible thing he'd ever seen, like an acetylene flame, an incandescent filament, a fallen star right in front of him.

He was in the right place. He was living his best life. How many other people in the multiverse could say that?

If there was any magic in this world that was not magic, it was wine.

I acknowledge immense debt to the griots [tribal poets] of Africa - where today it is rightly said that when a griot dies, it is as if a library has burned to the ground.

I wasn't reading it [the Bible] as literature. I was reading it as literature, and as history, and as a moral guide, and as anthropology and law and culture.

Robert Kennedy identified with people, not data, or institutions, or theories. Poverty was a specific black face for him, not a manila folder full of statistics.

Mandarin ducks mate for life and will die of loneliness if separated from their chosen mate.

Fidelity gives a unity to lives that would otherwise splinter into thousands of split-second impressions.

Many frequently change their principles, but seldom their practices.

Corneille is to Shakespeare as a clipped hedge is to a forest.

New York is the perfect town for getting over a disappointment, a loss, or a broken heart.

Love is primarily giving. It’s an action that leads to a feeling, not a feeling first.

My wife tells me one day, 'I think you love baseball more than me.' I say, 'Well, I guess that's true, but hey, I love you more than football and hockey.'