The washing-up was so dismally real that Bilbo was forced to believe the party of the night before had not been part of his bad dreams, as he had rather hoped.

Slight changes simply make a blur.

The birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus means that one day everything sad will come untrue.

The greatest adventure is what lies ahead. Today and tomorrow are yet to be said. The chances, the changes are all yours to make. The mold of your life is in your hands to break.

How do you move on? You move on when your heart finally understands that there is no turning back.

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.

The chief purpose of life, for any of us, is to increase according to our capacity our knowledge of God by all means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and thanks.

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

It simply isn't an adventure worth telling if there aren't any dragons.

It is not the strength of the body that counts, but the strength of the spirit.

Instead of a Dark Lord, you would have a queen, not dark but beautiful and terrible as the dawn! Tempestuous as the sea, and stronger than the foundations of the earth! All shall love me and despair!

A plague o' both your houses.

Adversity builds muscle. Adversity creates strength. Adversity, it turns out, is preparation for success.

Lately, I've been doing a lot of tuning in and impatiently tuning out. As a longtime fan of talk radio, I don't think this bodes well for the long-term broad appeal of the medium.

I'm old enough to make my own decisions.

The important thing is that the principles that Senator Obama outlined originally are now embraced and taxpayers will be protected.

We live in a time of twin credulities: the hunger for the miraculous combined with a servile awe of science. The mating of the two gives us superstition plus scientism -- a Mongoloid metaphysic.

I've never yet read a review of one of my own books that I couldn't have written much better myself.

One cannot let the events of one's past murder one's future.

There are moments when the heart is generous, and then it knows that for better or worse our lives are woven together here, one with one another and with the place and all the living things.

I have a pretty good sense of when to express misgivings. And white critics are just as capable of pointing those things out and noticing them as people of color.