Poets suffer occasional delusions of angelhood and find themselves condemned to express it in the bric-a-brac tongues of the human world. Lots of them go mad.

Literature is humanity's broad-minded alter-ego, with room in its heart for monsters, even for you. It's humanity without the judgement.

Life's generally artless ... but it does get these occasional hard-ons for plot. It connects things, nefariously, behind your back, and before you know it you're in the final act of a lousy movie.

Snow makes cities innocent again, reveals the frailty of the human gesture against the void.

That's what happens when you keep a secret from someone you love: you start to hate them for allowing you to prove your own willingness to deceive them.

Words betrayed her: beautiful butterflies in her mind; dead moths when she opened her mouth for their release into the world.

When you're a kid it's people's cruelty that makes you cry, then when you're an adult it's their kindness.

Coffee justifies the existence of the word 'aroma'.

There is no God and that's His only commandment.

With adolescent egotism and a lot of money one can pretty much rule the world.

You think God will never forgive you, but the only God is beauty and beauty always forgives. It forgives with its infinite indifference.

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.

When a man sleeps he is shut up within the narrow activities of his physical life. He lives, but he knows not the varied relations of his life to his surroundings, - therefore he knows not himself.

You don't want to pretend that 9/11 ended in 2002 with the first anniversary. So how do you frame the post-9/11 world and play a productive role in discussing it?

Longevity can't be the only test of love.

Being an athlete is a state of mind which is not bound by age, performance or place in the running pack.

Basketball isn't a game; It's an art form. You master the fundamentals so you can forget 'em, so you can improvise and just concentrate on what really matters: getting buckets.

The thing about happiness, though, is that it never lasts.

I've just always had a boyfriend my whole life, and I've - now I'm really focusing on myself and I think that's more important right now.

Among a man's many good possessions, A good command of speech has no equal. Prosperity and ruin issue from the power of the tongue. Therefore, guard yourself against thoughtless speech.

Information, knowledge, is power. If you can control information, you can control people.