Peter Van Houten was the only person I’d ever come across who seemed to (a) understand what it’s like to be dying, and (b) not have died.

Some tourists think Amsterdam is a city of sin, but in truth it is a city of freedom. And in freedom, most people find sin.

Amsterdam is like the rings of a tree: It gets older as you get closer to the center.

I feel like crying, so I must be crying, but it's impossible to tell because I'm underwater.

...And in freedom, most people find sin.

So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.

A taste so profound and complex that it can't even be compared to other tastes, only to emotions. Cheesy waffles, I was thinking, tastes like love without the fear of love's dissolution.

My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations.

The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.

All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm.

I would always love Alaska Young, my crooked neighbor, with all my crooked heart.

Old buildings whisper to us in the creaking of floorboards and rattling of windowpanes.

We may end up with a life deferred by the business of its own collection.

Virtue is an angel but she is a blind one and must ask of Knowledge to show her the pathway that leads to her goal.

When I'm not writing or tweaking my computer, I do embroidery. When I'm not plunging into the past, tweaking, or embroidering, I'm reading books about history, computers, or embroidery.

If you're worried about safety, you might like to follow my example and put on that seat belt." "The what?" Xavier shook his head in disbelief. "You worry me," he muttered.

If we value what we've inherited for free - from other women - surely it's right morally and ethically for us to wake up and say, 'I'm a feminist. '

I doubted myself for a long time... I'm comfortable not using my vision. I weave around my problems.

You have dreamed me into your dream to awaken you from the dreams of life, death and separativity.

I felt that the beach portraits were all self-portraits. That moment of unease, that attempt to find a pose, it was all about me.

I am no metaphysician, no philosopher, nay, no saint. But I am poor and I love the poor. I see what they call the poor of this country and how many there are who feel for them!