We’re creatures of contact regardless of whether/ we kiss or we wound. Still, we must come together.

Not being funny doesn't make you a bad person. Not having a sense of humor does.

Well into adulthood, writing has never gotten easier. It still only ever begins badly, and there are no guarantees that this is not the day when the jig is finally up.

Altruism is innate, but it's not instinctual. Everybody's wired for it, but a switch has to be flipped.

Being a stranger was like being dead, and brought to mind how, in a book he had read that most folks misunderstood one common state: The flip side of love is indifference, not hate.

There is nothing so cleansing or reassuring as a vicarious sadness.

Youth is not wasted on the young, it is perpetrated on the young.

Central to living a life that is good, is a life that's forgiving.

I am neither spontaneous nor ready for anything.

I have managed to establish an identity that is based on my internal self, and for that I feel tremendously lucky.

Just think, the shoes I wouldn’t be caught dead in might actually turn out to be the shoes I am caught dead in.

Be careful what you say...you might end up in my next book!

To admire me is to admire my silence, Petra HermansSeptember 5, 2016

In Eden, worship was not an event to attend, but a perpetual attitude.

You don't have to reach for the stars if you are already shining like one.

Meditate. Inspire others. Spend time by yourself. Manage your career properly. Work at something constructive, that doesn't injure others, and put your full attention into it.

Today we are raised with the notion that to be secure is to be financially autonomous. Amassing wealth is viewed as the primary rite of passage to a secure, autonomous existence.

Scandal begins when the police put a stop to it.

An innate gift and a certain amount of intelligence are important, but what really pays is ordinary experience.

Women will forgive anything. Otherwise, the race would have died out long ago.

I think the issue that concerns us is certainly regaining stability, but issues of human rights are an integral part of our reform policies, of our new constitution.