It struck me that distant cities are designed precisely so you can know where you came from.

The world spins. We stumble on. It is enough.

I write about what I know; and I write about things that are new to me, and that I didn't know before.

The thing about love is that we come alive in bodies not our own.

Long ago, long ago. The simple things come back to us. They rest for a moment by our ribcages then suddenly reach in and twist our hearts a notch backward.

There are moments we return to, now and always. Family is like water - it has a memory of what it once filled, always trying to get back to the original stream.

There's a part of me that thinks perhaps we go on existing in a place even after we've left it.

We have to admire the world for not ending on us.

It was a silence that heard itself, awful and beautiful.

Give life long enough and it will solve all your problems, including the one of being alive.

Even if people laughed at the notion of goodness, if they found it sentimental, or nostalgic, it didn't matter -- it was none of those things, he said, and it had to be fought for.

There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.

World is not like what you see

So - people a thousand years from now...This is the way we were: in our growing up and in our marrying and in our living and in our dying.

I have a love-hate relationship with performing.

The best argument for anarchism is the twentieth century.

Death changes nothing but the mask that covers our faces.

My days are in the yellow leaf; The flowers and fruits of love are gone; The worm, the canker, and the grief, Are mine alone!

In my view, a political vision is not a grab-bag of discrete problems and solutions. It is the visionary anticipation of a direction.

What is it between Obama and Iran? That's the question we all ought to have. Because it sure seems to me like Obama's got some sort of affection for that nation.

It is vanity to desire a long life and to take no heed of a good life.