They don't ask much of you. They only want you to hate the things you love and to love the things you despise.

I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn't of much value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them.

When a great moment knocks on the door of your life, it is often no louder than the beating of your heart, and it is very easy to miss it.

Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.

Man is born to live, not to prepare for life.

The writer is the Faust of modern society, the only surviving individualist in a mass age. To his orthodox contemporaries he seems a semi-madman.

To be a woman is a great adventure; To drive men mad is a heroic thing.

Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.

In life it is more necessary to lose than to gain. A seed will only germinate if it dies.

And why is it, thought Lara, that my fate is to see everything and take it all so much to heart?

All mothers are mothers of great people, and it is not their fault that life later disappoints them.

If your children know who God is they will know who they are, regardless of where you or they call home.

What is rank if not protection from the consequences which fall upon common men?

John Kerry says the 'W' in George W. Bush stands for 'Wrong.' But he still can't explain what John Kerry stands for.

When you're a black woman, you seldom get to do what you just want to do; you always do what you have to do.

Do as little as necessary to appear to be doing something without actually committing to a cause or course of action.

When I was in jail I could only think about what the average person has to go through - the person who has no power to go to the press or no money to hire a lawyer.

A few months post-baby is not the easiest time to pull out your best yoga poses.

You cannot learn to curse like an American.

One of the characteristics of kitsch is precisely the neutralization of 'extreme situations', particularly death, by turning them into some sentimental idyll.

I find that in a novel I can get more of life, perhaps not such intense life, but certainly more of life than in poetry.