My strength and my weakness are twins in the same womb.

The real writer is one who really writes. Talent is an invention like phlogiston after the fact of fire. Work is its own cure. You have to like it better than being loved.

thinking about tracking. . . . Sometime in grade school, already your fate was settled, your socialclass was established for the rest of your life.

I want to do something very important. Like fly into the past and make it come out right.

Where do dreams come from?...they slink out of books, they lurk in the stacks of libraries. Out of pages turned they rise like the scent of peonies and infect the brain with their promises.

Drifting with things is a habit it takes almost dying to break.

they were in love with apocalypse, like all men, more in love with myths than with any woman.

When will women not be compelledto view their bodies as science projects, gardens to be weeded, dogs to be trained?When will a woman ceaseto be made of pain?

A strong woman is a woman determined to do something others are determined not be done

We can only know what we can truly imagine. Finally what we see comes from ourselves.

People were not getting back what they wanted for their sold labor. Taxes grew and services shrank. Prices rose and quality decayed. Everywhere people felt used and betrayed and coerced and cheated.

That is morality, I make myself imagine that it is personal.

What are these fundamental principles, if they are not atoms?""Stories. And they give me hope.

Like many people who dress in black, the lump of coal was interested in becoming an artist.

God will never violate His Word, but He doesn’t seem to mind violating our understanding of His Word.

And the seriousness with which the other party takes my words always raises the doubt whether I have taken them seriously enough myself.

It is very easy for me to imagine in 200 years, people looking back at chemotherapy as proof that people of the 20th century were insane and just morons.

So, then, there abide these three, Aristotle, Longinus, and Coleridge.

Is it good or bad?" she asked Issa. The wrong question, she knew. She just couldn't help herself. "It's both, sweet girl," said Issa. "like everything.

I said if I made 10 films in my life, I would be very lucky. That's how I meant it. My fear after my first one was whether they would let me make another one, so I had this goal in my head.

We will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind.